Hush
by ss10009
Summary: Post-Remembrance. Suze's work at the newly opened Carmel Pediatric Center leads her and Jesse to their toughest challenge yet.
1. Chapter 1

**Notes:** This story is set a year and a half after the events in Remembrance.

I was posting a post book 6 Mediator fic, but then I figured if I revamped it enough, I could make it a variation of it as post book 7 instead. Much more fun that way. Please enjoy! (It's still different enough for me to continue my post book 6 fic, so if you're interested in Suze adventures that are not compliant with canon, don't hesitate to check it out.)

 **Hush  
** One

To be honest, I wasn't entirely sure if the receptionist knew my name. You would think she did, since it was written on the sign of the building that she worked in, and she must've seen it every morning when she rolled into the parking lot, but I still couldn't be sure. I had never once heard her say my name before. Felipa had a habit of calling everyone "honey" or "sugar" or "cariña" (or cariño in Jesse's case).

"I know you've married that handsome man, sweetie, but eight o'clock is when you're supposed to be here," Felipa said in greeting as I strode past the receptionist desk and further into the clinic where my office was.

Felipa was an old lady, so she could get away with chiding me like that without getting fired. Not that Jesse had any intention to fire her. The decades she'd spent at St. Francis prior to retirement had made her efficient, patient, and acclimated to the stimulation and excitement of the front desk. She was also Peruvian, and Jesse enjoyed speaking in Spanish with people who actually understand everything he said. So, in other words, people who were not me.

"I know, I know," was the muffled defense I gave for myself while I gripped my cup of coffee in my mouth with my teeth, held my bag in my left hand, and opened the door with my right. I could've asked Felipa for help, but I was trying to draw as little attention to myself as possible. Just because Felipa knew I was late didn't mean everyone else at the clinic had to know as well.

Halfway through me juggling my things and the doorknob, the door opened of its own accord. Or rather, it opened at the accord of Dr. Jesse de Silva, the person I'd been hoping to avoid most.

"Look who showed up just in time for her lunch break," Jesse said. One of his eyebrows, the one with the scar running through it, was raised in disapproval.

With one of my hands now free, I took the coffee cup out of my mouth and said, "There's almost an hour left till lunch. And I'm only late because I didn't feel well this morning."

It was true. I'd had a bad cold for the past week, and all of the Nyquil in the world wasn't doing a thing to fix it.

"In that case, you know that caffeinated beverages only make a cold worse, right?" Jesse said, and he took my cup of coffee from my hand before I could mount any protest.

He drained the rest of my coffee, which I had barely started on, in the span of about five seconds. Jesse's caffeine tolerance was a lot higher than mine or any other regular person's. But unlike most of the things that made Jesse different from other people, it had nothing to do with being born in 1830 or being revived over a century and a half later. His caffeine tolerance was entirely a product of med school.

"Is coffee really bad for colds or did you just want my coffee?" I asked.

"Both," he said. "And you should've told me or Felipa you weren't feeling well, so we could've called your clients to reschedule."

"Clients?" I asked. The whole reason I'd let myself lag around at home for so long was because I'd thought my schedule was empty and no one was waiting to see me. Jesse had been able to establish a pretty sizable patient roster already, given his reputation at St. Francis, but my clientele was still slight. So far, I'd spent more time around the clinic doing housekeeping than I had putting my counseling degree to use.

"Client," Jesse corrected himself. "I saw a boy with a fractured arm this morning, and his guardian was looking for a counselor for him. I recommended you, and since I knew your schedule was open…"

I started to swear but caught myself halfway. The prices on the swear jar had doubled since the clinic opened. There were young, impressionable ears around whose parents would probably change their clinic stat if they found out how often the resident counselor employed four letter words.

"When is he scheduled?" I asked.

"About five minutes ago."

This time I didn't catch the swear word that came out of my mouth, and Jesse gave me a reproachful look before I took off down the short hallway to my office.

I was greeted with two sights when I entered the room.

First, there was the sight of the ocean in the distance from the large window behind my desk. When Jesse bought the clinic he gave me the best room for my office. His logic at the time was that he wouldn't actually be meeting patients in his office, so I'd be spending more time in my office than he would in his, and besides, didn't I like looking at the ocean? I couldn't exactly say it was a decision I rebelled against.

Second of all, and, most importantly, there was a little boy and a woman sitting in the chairs in front of my desk.

"Finally," the woman said in exasperation. She had dishwater blonde hair that was decidedly brunette at the roots, and she was wearing a sweater set with pearls that didn't look entirely real. In contrast, the unimpressed look on her face was completely genuine.

I didn't bother making excuses, although the contents of my stomach deciding to become one with the toilet in a really unnatural way was probably a good one as far as excuses went.

"I'm sorry about the wait," I said, as the woman gave a sniffle of displeasure. "My name is Susannah de Silva. Pleased to meet you."

"Pauline George. Pleasure." The way she said "pleasure" didn't make me think it was a pleasure at all, but I shook her hand nonetheless.

"You can call me Suze," I said to the little boy standing next to her. His left arm was in a sling, as was typical for fractured arms, and the look on his face, a hollow expression in his gray eyes that sat behind a pair of limp, brown bangs, told me that his arm might not be the only thing that was broken.

I reached out my right hand for his, and he looked at it for a second before he took it in his own and shook it. He didn't offer me his name.

Pauline noticed and immediately saw to remedying this deficiency. "His name is Daniel. Daniel Powell. I'm his aunt. We were telling this to the doctor earlier, so I'm sure you've already heard, but Daniel witnessed a very unfortunate incident a couple of days ago. And he hasn't said a word since. He didn't even let on about how much his arm was hurting until this morning."

I looked from Pauline to Daniel, who, true to Pauline's word, had not spoken once.

"When you say unfortunate incident…," I said.

"His mother's death. She worked at the jewelry store on Lincoln Street. I don't know if you might have heard about it."

I had heard. There wasn't much in the way of exciting crime stories in Carmel, so the fact that there had been a homicide in a jewelry store would probably be the headline for the next month or three.

"Daniel here was in the car outside of the store when it happened. He said, well, he didn't _say_ , but he intimated that he was asleep and didn't see anything. But still. The police have already interviewed him about it to the best of their abilities."

I nodded while Pauline kept going.

"Now, look, I'm not really one for counseling. I think children are resilient. But the police did recommend that Daniel see someone, and since you're located within the clinic… You accept insurance, right?"

"We do," I said. That had been one of the conditions of the grant Jesse had received, to help patients regardless of their financial circumstances. We'd done our best to extend that idea beyond physical conditions to mental and emotional ones as well. "And the police were right to recommend that Daniel see someone. I'm happy you took their advice."

Pauline made a "hmm" noise, to showcase how unconvinced she was that she'd made the right choice. Then she asked, "What's your prognosis?"

"Prognosis?" I asked. She couldn't be serious.

"Prognosis," Pauline repeated frustratedly. She was indeed serious. "When do you think he'll start talking again? Start, you know?" And she made a few hand motions as if to convey an energetic smiling child.

That was one of the things people didn't really understand about mental health. Earlier, Jesse had probably told Pauline that Daniel's arm would mend in a few weeks, so Pauline wanted the same status report here. But Daniel was always going to carry the memory of his mother's death around. You couldn't put a cast and a sling on your own mind.

"With regular counseling, I believe we should see marked improvement in Daniel's condition," I said. It was a set phrase I used for people who were skeptical about counseling being helpful.

Pauline didn't look satisfied. "How regular can you make it?" she asked.

"Given the circumstances, I'd say two, maybe three times a week would be best for right now. We can scale back later to once a week."

"And then eventually nothing at all?" Pauline asked.

"Even without experiencing trauma, a weekly or biweekly counseling session is really a good idea for mental and emotional health."

Pauline gave me a withering look. "We'll see about that," she said.

I smiled as serenely as I could in response.

"Monday afternoons. Wednesday afternoons. Friday afternoons. Can you put that in your schedule? Daniel's school releases at three o'clock, so he can be here by half past."

I made a big show of opening up my datebook and looking thoughtful before I confirmed that I had availability during those times. I knew that I didn't have many clients yet, but Pauline didn't need to be privy to that information.

Pauline pulled out her cell phone, a Blackberry of all things, and inputted everything into her calendar. 3:30 to 4:30, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoons.

"Since today is Monday, would Daniel be interested in starting his first session today?" I asked.

She replied curtly, "I think Daniel has seen enough of the clinic for one day."

Given the unmoving blank expression he'd had on his face since I'd first met him, there was no telling if Pauline was right or wrong about this.

Pauline stood and tapped Daniel on the shoulder to follow suit. I stood as well and shook Pauline's hand again.

"It was nice meeting you," I said. "I look forward to seeing Daniel this Wednesday."

Pauline returned my handshake but not my words, and she and Daniel left my office soon afterwards.

I more than had my work cut out for me. If I didn't make headway and quick, I'd have to refer him to someone else, probably a psychiatrist and not just a counselor. My experience with Becca had given me some confidence in helping with more traumatic issues, but I was more used to dealing with clients whose recent experiences weren't quite so devastating.

I flipped open one of the psychology journals that I kept on the bookshelf behind my desk and was about three quarters of the way through with a paper about selective mutism when I heard a knock on my door.

I eyed my calendar, which was empty until two o'clock, before I said, "Come in."

It wasn't a client or Felipa on the other side of the door. It was Jesse who, judging from the boxes in his hands, came bearing takeout. He set the boxes down on the table across from my desk, where I'd set up two arm chairs and a coffee table as a less formal area for speaking with clients.

Once the boxes were out of his hands, he hung up his white lab coat on the coat rack next to the door. I tried not to let my eyes flutter downward to take in how well his butt filled out his pants, but I wound up failing. Just because Jesse and I had an active sex life now did not mean that I was going to stop checking him out any time soon.

He caught me looking when he turned around and gave me a knowing look when he saw I didn't have enough shame left to look sheepish about it.

"Thai food today," he announced before he set himself down in one of the armchairs and started removing food from the bag.

I put the journal down and joined him around the coffee table a second later.

When I reached for one of the takeout containers, a green curry whose deliciousness I could smell straight through its cup, Jesse pulled it away from my grasp and held it in his lap.

I groaned. "First the coffee now this?" I asked. "What gives? Is curry bad for a cold, too?"

"It's not that," Jesse said. And he held the Styrofoam cup in the air behind his head once he saw my hand reach across the table and head for his lap. "Promise me you'll be on time for work tomorrow," he said.

"What are you, my boss or something?" I asked. I didn't want to have to stand up to get my curry, but if it came down to it…

Jesse groaned. It was times like this that I could tell he regretted making me a part of the clinic. "Technically, yes. And, as your boss, I would appreciate it if you let someone know when you plan on being late. When I woke you up this morning, you told me you'd leave on your own and be here by eight."

"Fine. I'll be on time for work tomorrow. Do you want me to report our relationship to HR, too?"

"Susannah, you _are_ HR," Jesse said before he set the curry back down on the table.

I made a grab for it immediately while Jesse spoke again. "You know, as your husband, I think you should let me examine you," he said.

I grinned. "You mean you want to _juego al medicos_?"

" _Jugar al medicos_ ," he said automatically. "And no, I mean an actual examination."

"It's a cold, Jesse, not the plague," I said, and I took the lid off of the curry and grabbed a spoon from the bag of takeout.

"Still."

I shrugged as I put the first spoonful of curry in my mouth. It was just as good as I expected it to be, maybe even better. I followed the first spoonful with a second and a third soon afterwards. I put the curry down on the table briefly so that I could put my back against one side of the arm chair and hang my legs over the other side. I let my heels fall from my feet before I picked up the curry again.

After another mouthful, I said, "You could've given me a heads up that my newest client was a product of the jewelry heist."

Jesse looked up from his pad thai in amusement. "I would have if you'd been here on time."

I was about to complain that he was being unfair to me, since I was sick and all, when the phone on my desk rang. I rolled myself out of my chair to answer it.

"Carmel Pediatrics Center. Susannah speaking."

"It's Felipa, dear. Would the doctor happen to be in your office?" Felipa asked.

"He's in here."

"Is he decent for conversation or should I call back later?"

"Decent. Perfectly decent," I said. In the two weeks that the clinic had been open, Felipa had caught us going at it during lunchtime a grand total of one time, but I was pretty sure she would never let either of us live it down.

"Then tell him Dr. Whitehall is on line two when he's ready," she said.

"Will do."

Felipa's voice disappeared, and I noticed the button for the second line blinked in anticipation of someone picking it up.

"Phone for you," I said to Jesse. "Dr. Whitehall's on line two."

Jesse set his box of pad thai down on the table and headed over quickly. Dr. Whitehall was one of the people Jesse was interviewing for a job at the clinic. Having one pediatrician was fine, but two would've been better, especially if Jesse ever wanted to take any time off during the week.

My phone buzzed as I heard Jesse greet Dr. Whitehall.

I had a text from Gina:

 _IT'S GOING TO AIR!_

I texted her back a series of exclamation points immediately. Gina had stuck it out in Carmel for nearly a year after she landed her first theater role. She might've stayed here indefinitely, seeing as she was in a relationship with Jake now, but a talent scout from LA noticed her last fall and thought she'd be a good fit for a role in a new TV show. She'd gone down to LA and shot everything, but there was no guarantee that the show would actually see any time on TV at all.

Gina's next text was similarly in all caps.

 _I'M IN THE PROMO!_

Her next text was a link to a YouTube video.

I was about to open the link when I heard Jesse's phone call wrapping up. Instead, I texted

 _Can't wait to watch!_

and put my phone back on its lock screen just as Jesse returned the office phone to its receiver.

I looked at him, and he smiled lopsidedly.

"I think I've found our new addition," he said brightly.


	2. Chapter 2

**Hush**

Two

As it turned out, Dr. Whitehall was free the next day to come by for a more formal interview at the clinic. Or at least he was free for the hour between noon and one o'clock, which meant that Jesse and I had to cancel our informal daily lunch plans together the following day.

"Are you sure you don't want to conduct a portion of the interview, Susannah?" Jesse asked.

He was standing just inside my office, with his back to the closed door, a few feet in front of where I stood. It was five minutes to noon, and I knew that Dr. Whitehall had already settled himself into a seat in front of Jesse's desk in the office two doors down from mine.

"I know I said I was your boss yesterday, but what we have is a partnership," Jesse continued.

"I know it's a partnership. That's why both of our names are on the sign outside," I said.

Jesse didn't looked entirely convinced, so I said, "Do you want me to stay and interview him? I mean, I'd have to call CeeCee and tell her lunch is canceled, but if you want me to stay, I can."

I fiddled with the keys to the BMW as I said it. I'd gotten up at the same time Jesse had this morning, and he drove the both of us to work. It was environmentally responsible, and it made Jesse happy to know that I was showing up to work on time, even if I had felt like vomiting for most of the morning.

"So long as you're sure, querida, then it's fine. Enjoy your lunch."

I crossed the distance between us and gave him a quick kiss on the lips.

"I trust your judgement," I said as I pulled away from him.

He grinned lopsidedly and said playfully, "You should."

By the time I showed up at the Happy Medium about ten minutes later, CeeCee had already placed her order. I put in my own order, a portobello and goat cheese sandwich, and took a seat across from CeeCee at the booth she'd claimed.

She had her laptop in front of her and was halfway through a smoothie. God only knew what her Aunt Pru had put in it. Smoothies at the Happy Medium were always bananas, apples, mangos, and then something decidedly non-fruity, like radishes or kale.

"Business?" I asked.

"Pleasure," CeeCee said. "I was about to watch the promo spot for Gina's new show."

"I'll watch with," I said, and I abandoned my seat across from her and slid in next to her, so I could see CeeCee's laptop screen.

She angled it slightly and then pressed play on a YouTube video. I'd seen the commercial yesterday, after Gina had sent it to me, but I didn't mind watching it again. Gina's new show, _Devil's Advocate_ , joined in with the constant crop of legal dramas with a gimmick. The gimmick here was that the show's cast was deciding whether or not people were going to Hell. I wasn't sure how much material they could stretch out of that, but I hoped it was enough for Gina's career in LA to get a strong foothold.

"So that's her," CeeCee said, pausing at the screen and pointing.

I raised an eyebrow. "That most definitely is not her," I said. The girl on screen had green eyes and brown hair and, while she had a nice tan, her skin was most definitely not copper colored.

"Not Gina," CeeCee said. "I know it's not Gina. I meant it's Calla Rose."

I wrinkled my nose. "You follow Calla Rose?" I asked.

Calla Rose Portland was the heiress to a railroad or an airline or something else that came part in parcel with a lot of money, and she'd spent the past few years as an Instagram and runway model before transitioning to the silver screen. Everything I knew about her came courtesy of Gina.

"I don't, but I thought I'd try and get a glimpse of Paul's fiancé in action," CeeCee said.

My eyes must have gone the size of silver dollars.

"Paul's what?" I asked.

"Paul's engaged," CeeCee said, this time more slowly.

I wasn't sure how long I stared at CeeCee, but I know I spent at least ten seconds with my eyes fixed on her and not making a sound. The Paul Slater I'd seen last, the one who has high off of his inheritance, amongst other things, was in no rush to head to the altar.

Finally, I said, "Engaged to be married?"

"Yes, Suze. Engaged to be married. How is this shocking? It was in last month's alumni newsletter. And I'm pretty sure it must've been in _People_ or on Buzzfeed or something."

"Engaged," I repeated. And then I swore in a way that would've warranted a large submission to the swear jar.

"If it's any consolation…," CeeCee began.

"I don't need consoling," I said quickly. "This is good. This is great."

My tone, which was still shocked, did not convince CeeCee that I was happy about this. Because I wasn't happy about this. I was confused. I didn't care what Paul did, but there were certain ways in which I could expect him to be predictable. One of these ways was not going off and getting hitched.

"If it's any consolation, you and Calla Rose look a lot alike."

"If that were true, and it's not, it wouldn't be consolation. Just confirmation that Paul is still obsessed with me."

"I thought that would be consolation," CeeCee said.

I stared at her blankly. "Why the hell would that be consolation?"

She shrugged. "You're used to him being obsessed with you, and change is one of those things that hits people hard. Or something like that. You'd know better than I would, Mrs. Counselor."

CeeCee ended the conversation by pressing play and continuing with the rest of the video. But I couldn't bring myself to give my full attention to it.

Did CeeCee have a point? Paul getting engaged reminded me of him taking Kelly Prescott to the winter formal instead of me, way back in junior year. It had confused me then, and it was confusing me now.

Was he actually moving on?

The clip ended, and, before autoplay could decide that we wanted to watch an E! Insider report on Calla Rose's Hollywood mansion that was apparently up for sale, CeeCee exited YouTube. She opened up her e-mail account next and then let out a loud groan.

"Work?" I asked, as I slid back over to my side of the table.

CeeCee nodded in confirmation just as her food, an eggplant and chickpea salad, arrived at the table. My sandwich followed it shortly.

She didn't say anything for a minute as I munched on bread and mushroom. The only sound in the cafe was her typing at roughly two hundred words per second and CeeCee's Aunt Pru humming to herself distractedly from behind the counter.

After a few more moments of this relative silence, she closed the lid on her laptop and put a forkful of salad into her mouth.

She chewed, swallowed, and then said, "Work."

"How are things going between you and your work husband?" I asked.

CeeCee gave me a reproachful look. "Hugo is not my work husband," she said.

Hugo Braggart was totally CeeCee's work husband, even if she wasn't convinced that he wasn't. He'd graduated from the Mission a few years before we had, and he was one of the higher ups at the _Pine Cone_. CeeCee and Hugo formed a kindred bond ever since she'd replaced him as the head of the police beat.

"I call it like I see it," I said. "And besides, it's not like things have to be sexual for him to be your work husband. I'm pretty sure Felipa is Jesse's work wife."

CeeCee wrinkled her nose. "How is Felipa Jesse's work wife when you're his wife and you work with him?" she asked.

"Felipa never struggles with proper verb conjugation in Spanish."

CeeCee finished another bite of her salad and said, "Hugo told me he wishes he was back on the police beat."

"The police beat in Carmel?" I asked.

"It's been crazy these past few days, what with the heists and everything. And there's not a single lead yet. Or at least not any leads the police have felt comfortable telling the press. All we've got is a video of it."

I raised an eyebrow. "You've got the criminal on tape, and you still have no idea who did it? In a town the size of Carmel?"

"We got the crime on tape," CeeCee corrected, "not the criminal."

I must've still looked confused because CeeCee reopened her laptop and beckoned to me.

"You must not have seen the news this morning," she said.

I returned to her side of the table and watched as she typed "Carmel jewelry thief" into the search bar on YouTube. A page of results loaded a few seconds after she hit enter. The Happy Medium might not have had meat, but it did have a strong wifi signal.

CeeCee clicked on the first video, and I watched as security footage, time stamped for 23:52, played out across the screen. Nothing was amiss for the first few seconds. All I could see was a black and white view of a cash register and a glass case with some sort of jewelry inside of it.

I was about to ask CeeCee what was so remarkable about this video when the cash register moved of its own accord, like there were marionette strings attached to it or something. It wasn't a slight nudge to the side either. The register shook for a moment before the drawer burst open and displayed stacks of cash.

"It isn't locked?" I asked.

"According to the store owners who closed up, it definitely was," CeeCee said.

I kept watching as the stacks of bills began to move by themselves until they formed a small hill next to the cash register. And then the hill by the cash register became a hill that was headed out of the line of sight of the video.

Shortly after the floating wad of cash left the frame, the video clip ended.

"See the problem?" CeeCee asked as she shut her laptop again.

I was about to tell her that the problem was that I didn't see the problem, but then I realized that I could see the problem clear as day. There was no magic trick that was going to bust open a locked cash register and walk out with thousands of dollars without being seen. But there were spectral powers that had the potential to do that.

"I'm going to get you promoted, CeeCee," I said.

She looked at me with a raised eyebrow.

I glanced at Aunt Pru, who looked like she wasn't paying attention to anything besides a group of tarot cards in front of her, and said, "I'm one hundred percent sure what you've got on your hands is a ghost."

CeeCee did not look pleased.

Similarly, when I got back to the clinic a half hour later, Jesse was not pleased with the news either.

I had cornered him in his office and told him the whole story with four minutes to go until the clock struck one and our lunch breaks ended.

"Let's focus on the positive for now," Jesse said. "Dr. Whitehall will be joining us here soon."

"And that's great, except for the part where there'll still be a felonious NCDP on the loose after he gets here," I said.

Jesse sighed. "Trying to solve a mystery like this right now, with the clinic so new, sounds like borrowing trouble."

"The life of a mediator is borrowing trouble, Jesse. There's never a good time," I said in frustration.

But even as I said it I regretted my tone. I could see how tired Jesse looked. He was always the first person to arrive to the clinic, and he was always the last person to leave. He regularly stayed past five in an attempt to accommodate all the parents who couldn't take off work to get their kid into the doctor. I didn't think Jesse would ever stop being grateful over the fact that he was doing his dream job against all odds. And he showed every bit of that gratitude with how hard he worked.

He ran a hand through his hair and said, "When Dr. Whitehall gets settled in and there are more hands around the clinic, we'll start mediating then, alright?"

"Alright," I said.

Jesse smiled and I smiled back as I left his office.

Sometimes, if I kept my words short and sweet, Jesse couldn't tell that I was lying to him. Because I didn't plan on waiting for his help when the clinic calmed down.

Every second you leave a recalcitrant ghost unattended, the more damage they cause and a bigger problem they become. Twenty six years of experience had taught me that well enough. If the NCDP in question was hitting up jewelry stores, all I'd have to was figure out what store it was headed to next and have a little heart to heart with it.

And by "heart to heart," I meant my foot to its butt.


	3. Chapter 3

**Hush**

Three

"What's the first rule of mediation?" I asked as I stood in front of the triplets a few hours later. I'd left work two hours early to give them a mediator lesson in lieu of sitting in my empty office and wondering when I'd get more clients. Mopsy, Flopsy, and Cottontail stood across from me in the living room, and from where I was standing, I could see the bullet hole in the wall across the tops of their heads.

"Tell Aunt Suze everything," they chorused.

"What's the second rule of mediation?"

"Tell Aunt Suze everything."

"And the third rule?"

"Never underestimate a ghost."

"Exactly," I said.

There were a lot of things I'd had to learn by myself in the early days of being a mediator that I never wanted the girls to go through. What kind of aunt would I be if I didn't try to keep them from getting stabbed or shot at or pushed off of roofs into the space where the family hot tub was supposed to go? My lessons with the triplets had been going on for over a year, with Debbie and Brad none the wiser that the gifted and talented classes I said I took them to were actually ghostbusting lessons. What I wanted the girls to understand most was that they shouldn't just keep spectral news amongst themselves.

This understanding did not work both ways though. Occasionally, I'd let the girls help me solve an easy mediation case, but for the most part I shielded them as much as I could from any potentially abrasive ghosts. For instance, I had no plans of telling them about the ghost robber.

But the ghost robber wasn't the only ghost in my life right now.

I pictured the ghost in question in my mind. She was of East Asian descent, with an ombré bob, and looked like she was somewhere in her twenties.

She materialized a moment later between me and the girls.

"Suze?" the ghost asked.

"I've got some help for you," I said, and I waved a hand to indicate the triplets.

She turned to face them, clearly confused at the fact that they were looking straight at her, not through her, and said, "Uh…hello."

"Hi," the girls said in unison.

"I'm Emma."

"I'm Elizabeth."

"And I'm Emily. And we're mediators."

"That means we help ghosts move on to Heaven," Cottontail added.

"Or the bad place," Flopsy whispered.

"What's your name?" Mopsy asked.

The ghost looked back towards me in hesitation. "I told Suze this the other day," she said slowly, "but the problem is I don't remember."

This was not what the girls were expecting to hear. Mopsy looked at me in confusion. My only response was a nod for them to go on. Not every mediator case was open and shut, most weren't, so they could use a challenge. I wanted to see if they'd be able to figure out what I had the first time I'd talked to this ghost.

Mopsy still looked uncertain, but she asked, "What do you remember then?"

"I woke up in water," the ghost said.

The girls looked between themselves and then back towards me.

"You woke up in water," Flopsy repeated slowly.

The ghost nodded.

"Did you die at the beach? Were you going swimming?" Cottontail asked.

"I don't know. Maybe?"

The girls did not seem to be sure what to make of this again, so I spoke up.

"We went over this," I said. "Why might someone not remember what happened to them?"

Flopsy raised her hand very dramatically and bounced about. "I know, I know! An accident!"

"Bingo," I said. "Well, probably. What do we do next?"

The ghost looked at me in curiosity. The last time I'd seen her, ever so briefly, we'd ended things here.

"We ask Daddy," Cottontail said.

I sighed. "What's rule number four?"

"Don't tell anyone about ghosts who isn't Aunt Suze, Uncle Jesse, or Father Dominic," they said, slightly out of unison.

"You don't actually go to the police in real life. You go to the police online. They have a list of all the car accidents that have happened," I said.

"What happens then?" the ghost asked.

" _We_ find out who you are, then _you_ find out who you are, and you'll hopefully remember why you're sticking around."

"Sticking around?"

I nodded towards the girls. "You guys mind explaining?" I asked.

"You're not supposed to be a ghost, so it means you needed to do something before you died," Mopsy said.

"Did you need to tell someone something?" Flopsy said.

"Did you need to deliver something to someone?" Cottontail said.

"Oh," said the ghost.

In the meantime, I'd pulled out my phone and loaded up the browser. I had the California fatal accident reports page saved as a bookmark. I hadn't looked up our ghost yet, to give the lesson some authenticity, but I handed my phone over to the girls anyway.

"Find her," I said. "Look for someone a woman in her twenties."

Not only was being able to navigate databases like this a good ghostbusting skill, it would also help them with their reading comprehension and future school research.

After five minute of Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cottontail passing my phone between themselves, Flopsy said, "We can't find her."

"Let me see," I said.

Flopsy handed my phone back to me, and I scrolled through the results myself. I checked the results the girls had gone through and found that there weren't any fatal car accidents with women in their twenties in the past few days in the area. That would typically have been good news, but now it meant that I'd have to work harder.

I had to scroll through a week's worth of accidents to find someone who matched the ghost's description, Mika Thompson. But when I entered the name into Google and added car crash, the results indicated that Mika Thompson was black, which our ghost was not.

I kept scrolling and kept Googling, but I didn't find anyone who looked like our ghost.

The ghost in question looked at me hopefully, but the look in her eyes faltered as they met mine.

"I'll keep searching," I said to her. I'd have to take a look at the Missing Persons Database later, which would take longer. "I'll let you know when I find something."

The ghost nodded in understanding disappointment and dematerialized a second later.

Similarly, the lesson of the day began to draw to a close.

"What'd we learn today?" I asked once I'd gotten everyone piled in the backseat of the BMW.

"Logic puzzles," Flopsy said.

"Not what you're going to tell your parents if they ask. I mean, what did you actually learn today?"

"Nothing," Cottontail said decisively.

Flopsy and Mopsy quickly agreed with this.

I sighed.

"You learned that mediation can come with setbacks but not to get discouraged," I said.

None of them seem convinced by this, but we pulled into the driveway at their house shortly afterwards. They hopped out of the car the second I put it in park and killed any opportunity I had to further convince them that today wasn't entirely useless.

The triplets briefly swarmed Brad, who was standing outside to greet them, before they headed around to the backyard.

"Thanks again for taking them to lessons all the time," Brad said. "I wish my shift was over by the time the girls got out of school."

Brad had been accepted as a member of the Carmel-by-the-Sea police force. It was great for his relationship with Debbie to not be working with his father-in-law anymore. And it was great for me as a mediator because now I had connections not only to the press and to the church but to law enforcement as well.

"No problem," I said. "You must be really busy with the jewelry store robberies. I know CeeCee is."

"Yeah," he said with a nod. "Pretty much the whole force is investigating."

"Any leads?"

Brad shook his head and said, "And whoever it is has already hit up most of the stores in town."

I took a moment to try and decide how to subtly ask him which stores hadn't been hit up when Brad decided to do the work for me.

"Only two stores haven't been hit up, the ones on Ocean Avenue," Brad said.

I almost said "thank you" but caught myself. Instead, I said, "You guys have your work cut out for you, huh?"

I said goodbye to Brad soon after and headed back to the clinic. Jesse and I had come to work together, so leaving to get the triplets meant he didn't have a car to go home in.

Jesse only stayed a half hour later than usual today, so he got in the car only a couple of minutes after I'd pulled up. Even though Jesse was a better driver than me, which was not fair, seeing as he was born in 1830 and all, he got into the passenger side and we were off.

"Mediation lessons went well?" he asked.

"Pretty well," I said as I thought about how we still didn't know the accident victim's identity.

Jesse narrowed his eyes. "You didn't try and do more with the thief did you?" he asked.

"How irresponsible do you think I am? I said I'd wait for you, right?"

Jesse accepted this and did not ask for further details on spectral activity. This, however, was a mistake on his part. Although I had not and would not involve the girls in the ghost robbery, I had no intention to wait on Jesse.

The only thing I was waiting on Jesse for was for him to fall asleep.

It wasn't a long wait either.

Once we got home, I did my best at fixing a responsible adult dinner that wasn't takeout, but wound up not being able to make anything better than spaghetti. If Jesse thought there was anything strange about me washing down my dinner with two cups of coffee (I needed the caffeine to stay awake for later), then he didn't mention it. After dinner, Jesse read Herodotus, for fun, and I did yoga, for maintaining my physical flexibility as a mediator.

Jesse closed _The Histories_ after we'd passed over an hour of time this way.

"Coming to bed?" he asked.

"I'll be up soon," I lied. And with my back turned to him in the downward dog position he couldn't tell I wasn't being dishonest.

"Are you sure you don't want to come up now?" he asked in a low tone.

And I knew that tone.

If I went up those stairs with him, there was no way I was going to be in any shape to go out and do ghostbusting tonight. Jesse might get turned on the most when I'm dressed with more propriety, but, like most men, Jesse was defenseless against the allure of a pair of yoga pants.

"Just gonna keep doing yoga," I said.

I moved out of my downward dog, which was probably part of what was giving him ideas, and into a plank where I faced him. There was a definitive bulge at the front of his pants, and I tried to keep myself from shuddering. What I wouldn't have given to spend the night intertwined with my husband as opposed to staking out a ghost in a jewelry store.

The first rule of mediation is not "tell Aunt Suze everything." It's "the life of a mediator is unfair."

So I told him goodnight, in a tone as firm as what was in his pants, and maintained my plank for a few more seconds. I waited downstairs until it was a little past eleven before I climbed the stairs to our bedroom. My mediating boots, the ones that Jesse had bought as Maximilian28, were still upstairs in my closet. I wasn't sure how physical things between me and the ghost might get tonight, but I wanted to be prepared.

I crept in as quietly as possible and retrieved the boots without turning on any lights. The room was somewhat lit by the moon, which was streaming in through the bay window.

I headed out as quietly as I came before the silence was interrupted by Jesse's voice behind me.

"And where exactly do you think you're going, querida?" he asked. He sounded tired, but he was sitting up and looking straight at me while his bare chest reflected the glow of the moonlight.

Fun fact: Jesse did not wear anything to sleep at night.

But I tried not to focus on this too much.

"I wasn't going anywhere," I said as I looked anywhere besides him.

"You're lying to me," Jesse said. "I knew something was strange when you turned me down earlier."

"I'm not sex obsessed," I said.

Jesse gave me a look that said he disagreed.

"I'm not," I said petulantly. Considering how amazing Jesse looked and how talented he was in that arena, my sexual appetite was perfectly normal.

"Regardless," he said firmly. "You were going to go out looking for that ghost from the robberies, weren't you?"

"Time is important here," I said. "If we don't head this ghost off while we know its MO, then it may be harder to figure out where it'll be next. And I know you're tired, so I didn't want to bother you."

Jesse sighed. If he had a first rule of mediation, it probably was "nombre de dios, Susannah, just tell me before you do something stupid on your own."

"Where exactly did you plan on going?" he asked me, and he stood up and headed towards me. I thought he was coming over to interrogate me some more, and if Jesse thought that I could pay attention to him while he was standing in front of me naked in the moonlight, then we might as well have gotten divorced right then and there because he clearly did not know me at all.

But he wasn't coming over to talk to me. He was headed for the closet.

"I was going to go to one of the jewelry stores on Ocean Avenue," I said. I'd looked up the directions to both stores while I'd been downstairs. I figured I would start with the one that was slightly closer to our house.

Jesse emerged from the closet a few moments later in a slightly wrinkled button down and a pair of straight fits. He was holding his keys in his hands.

"I'm coming with you," he said.

 **Note:** At some point in time, eventually, I want to post an edit of this to Archive of Our Own.

I have a complete outline of this story, and I'm promising myself to write three chapters a week (to a total of eighteen chapters), so editing is not a thing that is happening at this point in time. I realize I should be breaking this up into more chapters or something (maybe having actual transitions?) so that it flows better (and more similarly to the original series), but there is no time to be thinking about flow or authenticity. Must write must write must produce must produce. Must not fall victim to writer's block.


	4. Chapter 4

**Hush**

Four

A bust.

That was what the entire night was. All of our efforts, driving down to Ocean Avenue and parking as close as we could while laying low from whatever surveillance Carmel PD has probably mounted, staying awake while Jesse dozed off next to me in the driver's seat, and keeping my eyes glued to the jewelry store to watch for signs of paranormal activity, had been for nothing.

I shook Jesse awake as the sun was rose. It was nearly 6 o'clock.

"Es el fantasma aqui?" Jesse said. He usually spoke in slightly slurred Spanish right after he woke up. I found it both cute and difficult to understand.

Thankfully, "el fantasma" was one of the first words I'd learned in Spanish, after "querida."

"No, Jesse. The ghost isn't here. It never showed up," I said.

Jesse yawned, stretched, and started the car.

"So that was the time sensitive matter you decided couldn't wait a few more days?" Jesse asked as we headed out of the Valley and into the Carmel Hills where we lived.

"I was right when I said you didn't need to come then," I said.

"You still should have told me," he said.

And I think he said something after that, but I wouldn't know. Once the car was in motion my eyes drooped closed, and they didn't open again until Jesse had pulled into the garage, turned off the ignition, and began to call my name.

"Go upstairs and get some sleep," Jesse said. "You look terrible."

"Just what every wife wants to hear from her husband," I said groggily.

"I'm serious, Susannah. You shouldn't have stayed up all night when you have a cold."

I was about to disagree with him and tell him I was fine when I realized I most definitely was not fine. I opened the car door and promptly spilled the contents of my stomach on the floor of the garage.

When I was done vomiting, the look on Jesse's face was not disgusted, which I guess was a given since he saw the bodily horrors children produced on a daily basis, but stern.

"You're not going to work. You're going to see a doctor," he said.

"I can't stay home today. I have appointments," I argued.

Why was I arguing? Between how my stomach felt and the sense of time delay I got from every move I made, thanks to my fatigue, staying home sounded like a godsend.

"You're sick, Susannah. You'll have to cancel," he said.

"I'm fine," I said emphatically.

Jesse still wasn't buying it. I wasn't buying my lie either, but I had my first appointment with Daniel today. I was willing to bet nearly anything that Daniel's mother had a close encounter with the ghost. Maybe Daniel had gone mute because he'd seen something he just couldn't explain, namely supernatural phenomena.

"I'm only letting you come to work today if you promise to see a doctor this evening."

"Whatever happened to being partners and equals and everything? You can't just order me to do things."

"I'm not worried about your wellbeing as your boss, Susannah. I know it's been more than a year, but don't tell me you've already forgotten that we're married."

"Fine," I said as I wondered if DayQuil and Red Bull would interact with each other negatively. "I'll take a trip over to St. Francis after I finish my appointments today."

Jesse was satisfied at that, and we both got out of the car, me jumping over the puddle of sick I'd left on the floor next to the passenger side. I'd have to hose that down soon.

I went upstairs with Jesse, thoroughly brushed my teeth, and then changed out of my yoga pants and mediation boots. What I wanted to do next was bury myself underneath the bed covers in my underwear and not come out until there weren't any bags under my eyes, but I resisted the temptation. Instead, I changed into an sheath dress and a blazer and then proceeded to try and put on as much makeup as I could to mask the fact that it was approaching twenty-four hours since I'd last slept.

Halfway through another round of under eye concealer, Jesse approached me from behind and put his arms around my waist.

I could feel the outline of his muscles through his shirt as he kissed the top of my head and said, "How do you really feel, querida?"

"Fine," I insisted.

"How do you really feel," Jesse repeated. "As in, truthfully."

I hesitated for a second before I said, "Nauseous."

As a reward for my honesty, Jesse moved his head from the top of mine to my earlobe. He nibbled it as he asked, very softly, "Headache? Muscle aches in general, maybe?"

"Only because I'm tired," I mumbled.

This was from my preferred brand of sexy talk, but Jesse's ministrations on my ear were quite persuasive, exhausted as I was.

"Are you experiencing any congestion? Stuffy head, runny nose…?" he asked.

His mouth moved from my ear to the side of my neck then, and I tilted my head to the side instinctively to give him better access. I was about to respond when I remembered that Jesse was not just my concerned husband; he was also a doctor.

"Oh, no, you don't," I said. "I'm going into work, and I'll stop by to see someone this evening."

"I had to try," he said, sounding not even a bit sheepish as he removed his arms from around me and began his own morning routine. He'd ironed the button down and changed into a pair of chinos. Jeans were typically frowned upon at the office amongst medical professionals.

I put on eyeliner and mascara without accidentally stabbing myself, an impressive feat when I was running off of approximately zero hours of sleep, while Jesse took to the task of shaving the stubble that had accumulated on his face since the previous morning. He always shaved with a straight razor instead of a regular electric one. Jake and Brad found this, the act of shaving with a straight razor, incredibly cool and masculine, but I always found the sight of a sharp blade so close to Jesse's face a bit daunting.

Daunting? More like...nauseating.

And for the second time that morning, I found myself spilling my guts. After what had happened in the garage, there wasn't much of anything left though. I spent most of my time in front of the toilet dry heaving in agony. I felt one of Jesse's hands on my back and the other pulling my hair away from my face. True love, the kind of love Madame Zara described, meant holding the other person's hair while they threw up.

"I'm going to work," I insisted as I raised my head from the toilet and pulled off a piece of nearby toilet paper to wipe my mouth with.

"You didn't even show up on time on Monday," Jesse said. "Why do you care so much today?"

I flushed the toilet and then put the seat and lid down so that I could sit on it. Standing was a more formidable challenge than sitting.

Jesse didn't look annoyed with me over my stubbornness though. His eyes were only full of concern. It was that concern that made me break.

"I'm meeting with the kid from the robberies today," I said. "I think he might know something that could help us."

"I should have known it was that," Jesse said. "But if you're sick, then ethically, putting you around so many young children..."

"Young children who are also sick and probably gave me my cold."

"I don't think this is a cold, querida. Not with you throwing up twice in such a short time period."

I drew my knees up to my chest while still sitting on the toilet seat cover. "It's a cold," I said stubbornly.

"When is your appointment with the child?" Jesse asked.

"Three thirty."

"Then take the morning off and go to St. Francis."

"Can't I just take the morning off and sleep and drink some orange juice?"

Jesse gave me a withering look. For a man who'd once suggested I put butter on my blistered feet, he really did turn his nose up at home remedies.

He checked his watch and said, "It's a quarter till seven. I'll take you there myself, and you can take a taxi back home. You're in no state to drive."

His tone was final, and I realized that arguing with him at this point was futile. He left the bathroom while I brushed my teeth again and reapplied some of my makeup. Apparently, not even a lipstain could stand up to stomach acid.

The BMW was sitting in the driveway by the time I arrived outside, and the garage was open, and the floor was wet. Jesse had done me the favor of cleaning things up from earlier, thank God.

I climbed into the passenger side and dozed off in the short ride between our house and St. Francis. Jesse shook me lightly to wake me up once we'd arrived at the hospital.

As I prepared to get out of the car, Jesse said, "Take a cab and go home after your appointment. And sleep. I don't want to see you at work before three."

Jesse worried too much sometimes, but I didn't tell him so. Instead, all I said was goodbye.

When I entered the hospital a few moments later, I was greeted by none other than Peggy, who looked at me with recognition when I met her eyes. You don't forget the woman who threatens to sick a bunch of unvaccinated kids on your maternity ward, after all.

"Are you here to see someone today? I see you didn't bring any children with you today," Peggy said in a tone that had a bit more of a hostile bite than that of most receptionists.

"I'm not here to visit anyone today. I want to make an appointment," I said.

At that, Peggy looked somewhat chagrined as she changed her tone into a more professional one. We went over my symptoms briefly and she gave me some paperwork to fill out.

I took the clipboard from Peggy and began copying down information in one of the hard seats of the hospital waiting room. The local news was playing in one of the corners of the room. From where I wasn't sitting, I couldn't really hear it, but I could read along with the closed captions. But I didn't need the captions for what was playing across the screen.

There was a surveillance video on the TV screen, just like the one I'd seen at theHappy Medium courtesy of CeeCee, taken at a jewelry store. The cash register came open of its own accord and stacks of money came dancing out by themselves until they floated out of the line of sight of the security camera.

But Jesse and I had been parked there, albeit at a bit of a distance, and I hadn't taken my eyes off of the damn store for hours. I hadn't seen anything amiss at all. The only way the robbery could've happened without me knowing was if it happened at the other store.

And when I read the captions after the the surveillance footage clip was taken off of the screen, my suspicions were confirmed. All the excitement was going on down the street from where we'd been last night.

Which meant that the jewelry store Jesse and I had parked near was definitely going to be the one the ghost decided to hit up next.

I was on the verge of formulating a plan when I heard by name being called by one of the nurses.

"Suze?" the nurse asked. I recognized her from Jesse's days at St. Francis at Jill. She was plain but reasonably kind and very briefly had the ghost of a former patient vying after her. That was the primary reason why I still remembered her.

"Long time no see," I offered.

Jill smiled. "I wish we could be meeting again under different circumstances," she said.

She took down my weight, blood pressure, and temperature, and grilled me briefly on my symptoms before she left me to my own devices in an examination room.

I hopped onto the examination table as I waited for the doctor, who, according to Jill, was named Dr. Morgan. I hadn't heard the name before, so I wasn't sure if he knew Jesse or not.

While I was waiting, I whipped out my phone. Instead of texting anyone or playing a round of Ghost Mediator to pass the time (I would rather support Jack Slater in my boredom than Kim Kardashian or whoever was behind Candy Crush), I saved the address of the remaining jewelry store into a note file. I wasn't looking forward to it, but I'd have to go back. I hoped the ghost could hold off on thieving and murdering for an evening while I slept. A mediator who was as far from full strength as I was would not be particularly helpful.

Just as I put my phone back into my bag, the doctor entered the room.

As it turned out, Dr. Morgan was a woman.

I stood and shook her hand.

"Nice to meet you, Susannah," she said. "I'm Morgana."

"Dr. Morgana Morgan," I said. "And here I thought my mom was a bit vindictive for naming me Susannah."

Dr. Morgana Morgan grimaced. "It's why we encourage our patients here to wait until after the pain killers have worn off a bit before they name their child," she said. "But enough about me. You don't have a fever and your blood pressure looks great, but the nurse tells me that you've been feeling nauseous and tired for the past week or so."

"That about sums it up. I know I'm wasting your time and everything since it's just a cold, maybe a stomach bug, but my husband's a doctor, and he kept begging me to get it checked out, so…."

"Your husband's a doctor, huh? You wouldn't happen to be married to the Dr. de Silva who used to work here in the ER, would you?"

"That's the one," I said.

"I've heard good things about him then, and I think he's got a good point. I don't think you're wasting my time at all."

I was pretty sure she was wrong about that, but I didn't mention it.

"Can you tell me when your last period was?" Dr. Morgan asked.

"Oh, I'm not pregnant," I said immediately.

"I didn't say you were. I'm just trying to consider all possible options."

"I'm on birth control," I emphasized.

"So then the date of your last period should be particularly easy to remember. When did you take your placebo pills?"

"Two and a half weeks ago," I said.

"So then your last period was two and a half weeks ago?"

I fidgeted. "More like six and a half. I might have skipped a period."

Dr. Morgan made a "hmm" noise, like she had already constructed an image of me in her mind giving birth in nine months or something.

"I know you can skip periods when you're stressed out enough. My husband and I just opened a clinic up a couple of weeks ago, and we've both been pretty stressed. Missing a period doesn't really mean anything," I said.

I'd had to learn all about stress in counseling courses. The toll stress could take on the body went far beyond the mind. There were plenty of physical ways in which stress could manifest itself. One of which was missing or irregular periods.

"That's very true, Susannah," Dr. Morgan said. "Stress can affect your menstrual cycle. But stress only affects the menstrual cycle of those who are not taking hormonal birth control."

I shifted uncomfortably, and my mouth suddenly felt drier than usual.

"Oh," I said weakly.


	5. Chapter 5

**Hush**

Five

"You were right, Jesse."

Jesse grinned at me and said, very smugly, "I typically am."

"Taking the day off was a good move. I feel a lot better now."

"I thought so. Stomach viruses clear up on their own, but you're going to make yourself miserable if you don't slow down for a few moments. The world will be right where you left it when you come back, querida."

And then he climbed into bed beside me, apparently none the wiser that his wife was lying to him.

It couldn't be helped though. My lying to him, I mean. The stakes were too high to tell him now, right when we had just started investigating a thieving, homicidal ghost. If he knew the truth he'd insist on handling everything himself. Because I knew Jesse. Jesse did not like the idea of me being in danger even when I was in peak condition.

So I knew his macho side would absolutely revolt against the idea of his six weeks pregnant wife being in danger.

Dr. Morgana Morgan had confirmed it yesterday, even though it didn't make any sense to me because why had I been bothering to take birth control if it wasn't controlling anything? I took it every day at the same time, didn't skip days, and had never thrown any of it up (until recently at least). Her only answer for me had been, "Technically, Susannah, birth control is only 99.9% effective. By the way, please stop taking your birth control and go out and buy some prenatal vitamins today."

Jesse and I had talked about having children offhandedly, but we'd never actually sat down and planned anything out before. We had barely settled in at the clinic. It would've been better if we'd pushed back on the whole kid thing for another year or two.

Another year or three might have given me more time to grow up.

Because here I was, still slamming money in the swear jar like there was no tomorrow and regularly eating takeout instead of successfully cooking meals and sticking to my guns about my stubborn mediating habit of keeping things from people, including my husband. The more I thought about the whole thing, the more I didn't want to think about it all. And the more I didn't want to think about it, the more my mind forced me to confront it.

I was going to be a terrible mother.

Besides, how was I going to manage being a mother and a counselor and a mediator?

I didn't want to live my life according to any schedule made up by ghosts, but sometimes it was hard not to. After all, I was the best mediator in the northern California area, what with Jesse being a lot busier with the clinic than I was and Father Dominic being not exactly spry enough with his cane to be able to do battle with NCDPs anymore. I made the most regular sacrifices in the field of mediation.

Take, for instance, the past twenty-four hours.

Yesterday had been a lot less fruitful than I would have liked it to be. I took a taxi home, napped for a couple of hours, and then stopped by the pharmacy in the Land Rover to pick up the prenatal vitamins Dr. Morgan had suggested I buy. And then I showed up to work to see Daniel, the very reason I'd come into work instead of taking the whole day off to wallow in my nauseous pregnant misery, and I proceeded to make absolutely no headway with him.

I don't know what I'd been expecting. I thought the second his overbearing aunt was out of the room, we'd just bond or something, and then he'd reveal that he'd seen a shimmer of something out of the corner of his eye that couldn't have been real. He would also tell me the ghost's first and last name, city of birth, and possible the last four number of their social.

Instead, Daniel had looked at me, then looked away, and spent the entire length of the session in utter silence. So I abandoned the part of me that was acting as more of a mediator than a counselor, and I'd found something for him to do that allowed him to be completely silent: art. I gave him paper and a pack of crayons (with 152 different colors and a special crayon sharpener) and we doodled together.

I had drawn a picture of Spike, who was getting on in years but still hated me as much as he had the day I'd found him, and Daniel drew a very detailed drawing of a fighter jet. Or at least, I thought it was a fighter jet. I'd explained all about Spike and showed him a scar on my hand from when he'd ruthlessly scratched me a few years back, but Daniel had not participated in story time.

As a counselor, Daniel expressing himself was definitely a plus sign, but it wasn't exactly a victory for me as a mediator.

And tonight probably wouldn't be any more successful.

I hadn't gone out the night before, so I'd checked the local news website religiously today to see if there was any footage of a robbery at the last jewelry store. There was no footage, and there hadn't been any more news on the ghost robber though. How could there be? Unless someone on the Carmel police force was a mediator, this case was going to go unsolved until I figured it out myself.

Me leaving to stake out the last store was doing a service to mediation and to the people of Carmel. Who knew what the ghost might move on to once their weren't any more jewelry stores left to hit up? Who knew who the ghost might decide to murder next? For all I knew though, last night was a sign that the ghost was done with jewelry stores, and my investigation had already come too late.

But I still had to try.

I shifted in bed slightly, but I didn't feel Jesse move at all in response, and nothing changed in the sound of his breathing.

Jesse didn't snore, but I could always tell when he was asleep. The way he breathed was deep, slightly audible, and so totally relaxed that it sounded like he was doing some kind of sleep yoga. I think he managed to sleep so well because he always went to bed exhausted. Back in the nineteenth century, toiling away on his family's ranch all day had done the trick. And now he was dedicating time to his job that went far beyond his office hours. Every hour Jesse slept was an hour of sleep he'd more than earned.

There was no change in his breathing pattern even as I slowly rolled out of bed. I knew better than to think that meant I was out of the woods though. Jesse could be in a coma, and he'd still manage to wake up if he sensed I was in danger.

So I was going to have make sure I stayed safe tonight.

I headed off down the stairs immediately once I'd gotten out of bed. I'd been smart about everything this time. This time I had remembered to leave my boots downstairs. I changed out of my pajamas and into a pair of leggings and an oversized sweatshirt in the living room. I wasn't going to win any awards for glamour anytime soon, but I was going to be comfortable. I grabbed my handy dandy mediation tools, my phone, a set of brass knuckles, and a pair of binoculars, and headed out the door.

When I arrived on Ocean Avenue, I parked the Land Rover as far as I could while still keeping an eye on the jewelry store. Even from far away, it wasn't too hard to keep an eye on the place. The lights in the store were on, and, although the premises looked empty, it also looked about as bright as an examination room. Moreover, the police outside weren't bothering to hide their presence in the parking lot. Maybe this was why the ghost hadn't decided to stop by yesterday. With a cop car lying in wait, it must not have looked like an appealing site for a robbery.

The police's strategy was perfect for stopping thefts but horrible for catching thieves.

With ten minutes down on the clock, and nearly forty-five minutes to go until it was midnight, I was already getting pretty impatient at the idea of sticking it out here all night. There was no way I was going to stay until six in the morning again. Because I hadn't just used my sick day to sleep. I'd found every single one of those Carmel heist footage videos on YouTube and memorized them all. There was only one video missing, the one with the murder of Daniel's mother, and I wasn't sure if that was because even the internet wasn't grim enough to post a video of someone dying (I doubted it) or if it was because the video in question didn't exist.

The timestamp on each of the videos I'd seen, and the police report I'd found regarding the death of Daniel's mother, Francesca Powell, indicated that each of the robberies had taken place between eleven at night and one in the morning. At the very latest, I would stay until one thirty. Even though I had spent a significant portion of the day sleeping, I was still going to be exhausted before too long.

After all, fatigue came part and parcel with pregnancy.

But I wasn't going to think about that. Not now. Preferably, I wouldn't think about the future until I had a better handle on the present, the present being the murderous, thieving ghost who was Carmel's latest threat.

The murdering, thieving ghost who I could see now, in the bright lights of the store.

In an instant, I put the binoculars that I'd rested on the passenger seat in front of my eyes and adjusted the view. The ghost was standing in front of the cash register. The ghost was a woman, with wavy hair that was a mixture of blonde and brunette and beach. With the way she was standing, I could see her in profile. She was tall and slender, the most highly represented body type in the Valley.

And then she turned so that her back was towards me, and all I could see was the cascade of hair going down her back and the back of her legs in a pair of skinny jeans. She was standing next to the cash register still, and I watched it intently, waiting for the moment when it burst open.

But it never did.

Instead, there was a sudden explosion of glass. It flew in the air before hailing down in a crystal clear storm. And then, suddenly, the storm wasn't quite so clear anymore. The glass was joined by an array of flying jewels, all swirling around in the air of the jewelry shop. And in the middle of the fray stood the ghost, who was still standing with her back to me.

I took my eyes off of her for a moment and watched as two policemen exited from their squad car, guns drawn. I looked at the faces of the policemen for a few seconds to see if Brad was one of them. But he wasn't there.

And when I turned my eyes back to the store, neither was the ghost.

The rain of glass and jewelry had let up, and, from what I could see, the floor and counter space of the shop were absolutely littered with debris.

I took another look around, but I didn't see the ghost materialize anywhere else where I could see her. I then put down the binoculars and eyed the clock on the dashboard. Calling someone with a little over a half hour until midnight was definitely less than polite, but I hoped CeeCee wouldn't mind too much.

She picked up the phone after about five rings.

"Whose obituary do you want now?" she asked. CeeCee had grown accustomed to me occasionally calling her up at odd hours with odd requests for the sake of my mediator duties.

"That's the thing," I said, trailing off.

"Oh God. You don't know 'whose,' do you?"

"You know me too well."

"What do you have for me? A name? An age? Date of death?"

I hesitated before I said, "She has wavy hair that's sort of blonde and sort of brunette. And she's tall. And skinny."

CeeCee didn't say anything for what felt like a full minute.

"You still there?" I asked.

"You've got to be kidding me," she said finally.

"If you find out who she is, then it's the first step on the road to cracking open the robbery case. Think about it, CeeCee. We both saw the video on YouTube. This is beyond the eyes of Carmel now. If you're the first one to get the scoop on this, they'll probably make you head of the entire paper."

"Fine," CeeCee said, in a voice that let me know that it absolutely was not fine but that she had resigned herself to her fate. This voice was standard fare when it came to answering these sorts of requests from me.

"Thanks," I said. "And sorry about calling so late."

"It's fine." And this time, CeeCee's voice on the word "fine" was genuine. "I'm out right now anyway."

"Out? Where?"

"Just grabbing a drink."

I paused for a second and then said, "CeeCee, are you on a date?"

"It's not a date!"

"Is it with Hugo?"

"I'll see what I can find, and I'll get back to you later," CeeCee said quickly and hung up the phone.

I couldn't help but grin as I put the car in drive and went home.


	6. Chapter 6

**Hush**

Six

If Jesse knew I'd left to do some ghostbusting last night, then he didn't let on about it. The only thing he'd mentioned to me that was out of the ordinary was that I would be meeting with Dr. Whitehall today to discuss his benefits and all the other things I was supposed to talk to him about as the unofficial HR representative of the clinic.

The first thing I noticed about Dr. Whitehall when I met him a couple of hours later was that he was a very good looking guy. He reminded me of Jake sort of. I wouldn't have been surprised if he spent his free time hitting the waves on Carmel Beach. He was blonde haired and blue eyed and sun kissed. He smiled at me while I shook his hand, and I couldn't help but notice how white his teeth were.

The Carmel Pediatrics Center was well on its way to becoming the most attractive healthcare facility in the valley.

"Excellent meeting you, Mrs. de Silva," Dr. Whitehall said. "I'm Brett Whitehall. Call me Brett."

"Nice to meet you, too, Brett. Call me Suze."

"Suze," he repeated, testing the name out briefly before he smiled again. Jesse's smile was by far my favorite one, but I had to give Brett credit for his.

I explained his benefits to him and then we talked casually for a brief period before he rose, shook my hand again, and turned to leave.

Jesse entered for lunch no more than ten minutes after Brett had left. He performed his usual routine of hanging up his lab coat and setting some takeout down on the coffee table. Instead of taking a seat at one of the chairs though, he strode over to my desk until he met me behind it.

"Do you feel alright today, querida?" he asked as he put one of his hands on the desktop.

I was keeping a toothbrush in the top drawer of my desk in case I threw up at work, but Jesse didn't need to know that. What mattered was that right now, in this moment, with the sleeves of Jesse's shirt rolled up and revealing his sculpted forearms, I felt more than fine.

"Perfect," I said.

"Good," Jesse said.

And then he attacked me.

His kiss was so searing it nearly surprised me. But then again, in all the years since I'd first kissed Jesse, I'd never built up a tolerance for him. Each kiss was just as intoxicating as the very first one had been. I felt slightly dazed when he pulled back from me.

"Alright enough for this?" Jesse asked me lowly.

There was no mistake what "this" was. I could already see the tightness against the front of his pants.

"More than alright," I said.

And this time I kissed him, while pulling him towards me by his belt loops.

My blouse was halfway unbuttoned by the time the phone rang. Not the office phone but my cell phone. It was lying on the desktop and vibrating annoyingly, but I was more than willing to ignore it.

Jesse, on the other hand, spared it a glance.

I kissed his neck in an effort to remind him that there were much more important things to be doing right now than answering phone calls. Lunch break was only an hour after all. But Jesse picked up the phone anyway.

"Father Dominic," he said.

In an instant every bit of arousal I'd felt was as dead as roadkill. Which wasn't to say that Father Dominic was a hideous monster or something. Far from it. Father Dom was definitely good looking for someone in their seventies. He still had all of his hair, a pair of killer baby blue eyes, and, though less spry than he used to be, he looked nice enough in his priestly robes. If he wasn't a priest, I'm sure he could've gotten as much senior citizen tail as he wanted.

But he was a priest, and he had formerly been my principal and was still my mentor, so Father Dominic and lustful thoughts might as well have been oil and water.

"We're both here," Jesse said, in response to something Father Dom had said. "I'll put you on speaker phone."

Father Dominic's voice filled the room a second later.

"Jesse? Susannah?"

"Present, Father D.," I said, and I took to the task of buttoning my blouse back up.

"Oh good," Father Dom said. "I've been meaning to talk to the both of you lately. But it's been hard to get a hold of you, Susannah. I haven't seen you at Mass lately."

"I haven't been feeling well lately," I said, which was true.

Jesse raised an eyebrow at me, as if to say, "You must not have been feeling well for over a year then." He didn't say this though, so Father Dominic continued.

"I wish I could be calling under better circumstances, but I think there may be some ghost activity in Carmel," Father Dom said. "I was on Facebook the other day when I a saw a video about all of the commotion at several local jewelry stores."

Of course Father Dom was getting his news from Facebook. The last time I'd logged on, months ago, it felt like half of my feed had been posts from him. He posted photos from every retreat he went to, any special service down at the Mission, and very frequently provided links to articles about birds. I was only surprised that Father Dom hadn't heard about everything sooner, between the coverage on actual TV and the frequency with which he visited Facebook.

"We're aware, Father," Jesse said. "We're going to investigate it further soon."

"Yeah," I said, doing my best to not let my tone give away the fact that the investigation was more than underway on my end.

"Well, at any rate, we should strategize in the meantime," Father Dom said.

"Jesse and I will strategize, Father D. We're not going to let you wind up in the hospital again."

"Do not treat me like an invalid, Susannah," Father Dom said, and his tone was strict and left no doubt that he'd been a teacher at one point.

"You're not an invalid, Father, but Susannah is right," Jesse said. "I've seen the videos on the news myself, and this ghost is powerful. It could be that we are dealing with someone who has been dead for quite some time now."

I could hear Father Dom sigh from the other end. "Well, I trust you will still keep me up to date on whatever should happen with this ghost?"

"Of course, Father D.," I said.

The conversation went on for another fifteen minutes or so, effectively killing any chances Jesse and I had for a naughty nooner. We spent the rest of our lunch break eating, and then went back to our respective jobs afterwards. Jesse's schedule was still booked solid in contrast to mine. I only had a couple of appointments that afternoon, but my appointment at half past three was of particular import.

At 3:32, Daniel Powell entered my office unaccompanied and sat in one of the chairs around the coffee table, the same place he'd sat last time. I quickly joined him, paper and crayons in tow, and slid a piece of paper across the table to him.

"Same as last time, OK, Daniel?" I said.

Daniel nodded and picked up one of the pieces of paper from the table. He studied it momentarily, like he was trying to visualize a piece of art coming into instantaneous fruition on the page, and he selected an orange crayon. He put the orange crayon down a few moments later without making any marks on the page and exchanged it for a brown one.

Well, technically, the crayon colors were neither "orange" nor "brown." When you're working out of a 152 pack of crayons, the names of the colors get a little funny. He was probably using "monarch butterfly" and "coffee bean" or something.

I picked up a blue crayon ("Wild Blue Yonder") and started drawing the outlines of small, puffy clouds. I was a terrible artist, as Daniel already knew from my previous drawing of Spike, so clouds were a good safety zone for me.

From where I was sitting, I could see out of the window next to my desk. The sea lay beyond that window, and I picked up a different shade of blue, without thinking, to begin to draw its waters.

Sitting and drawing wasn't just therapeutic for Daniel, it was also therapeutic for me. The last time I'd sat down with crayons out of my own volition, I must've been in elementary school. That had been before my dad died and before I'd understood my responsibilities as a mediator. Life had been simpler back then, to say the least.

But in a weird way, I wouldn't call it better.

I still got that feeling, like everything was OK and nothing that I couldn't handle would dare to exist, every time I watched the sunset at the beach with Jesse. I couldn't wait for that feeling again. Once we'd caught the ghost robber I would be able to tell Jesse that he was going to be a father before too long, and the dishonesty between us would dissipate.

And as I began to draw sand at the bottom of my picture, I started to think that I should just tell Jesse now. Tell him everything. So things could be simple again and…

And then I realized that I was starting to give myself therapy. Serenity could wait. Right now, I had a client and a case that needed to be sorted out.

Just as I was putting the finishing touches on a starfish on the sand, Daniel slid his paper across the table to show me what he had drawn.

His drawing today was no less impressive than the fighter jet I'd seen him draw yesterday. Today's drawing was a man, or at least a man from the waist up. The bottom half of the man was the body of a horse, or some hooved animal. Daniel had only taken twenty minutes, but his work spared no attention to detail.

"That's a great minotaur," I said.

After a moment's hesitation, he nodded.

I might've been mistaken, but I was pretty sure minotaurs were the ones with human bodies and horse heads, and what Daniel had actually drawn was a centaur. I was hoping he would take offense to me slandering his art and speak out to correct me, but he didn't.

I turned my paper around to show him the beach I'd drawn. My drawing was rudimentary, but the subject was still obvious enough.

"I drew a beach," I said. "I grew up in New York, and there aren't any beaches out there. Not real beaches, at least. So ever since I came to California, I've loved going to the beach. Would you like to tell me anything more about your drawing?"

Daniel shook his head, and I tried not to sigh.

He then selected a blank sheet of paper from the stack on the table, and we started the process all over again.

I decided to challenge myself this time by drawing a horse. Jesse liked horses. I could probably give him my drawing afterwards, and it would make him laugh for at least two solid minutes.

Progress on the horse I was drawing didn't look good nearly a half hour later, and Daniel's appointment was rapidly drawing to a close. I was about to inform him of this when he slid his last drawing of the day across the table to me.

I picked it up and surveyed it for a few seconds.

"Who is she?" I asked.

But, in line with his usual MO, Daniel did not provide me a with single word of explanation. So I looked closer to piece things together for myself. Daniel had drawn a very pretty woman with long, wavy hair that was a mix of browns and golds. If I hadn't known what his mother looked like from the police report and subsequent obituary, I would've assumed he was drawing her. Though judging from how attractive the woman he'd drawn was, maybe she was just as imaginary as the centaur he'd put to paper earlier.

But as I stared at the waves in her hair and the almost photographic way that Daniel had captured them, I realized that I knew exactly who this woman was.

Or, rather, I didn't know who she was at all, but I had seen her before-last night.

I'd never gotten a glimpse of her face, but Daniel had drawn it in its full glory.

"She's very pretty," I offered. More than anything, I wanted Daniel to say something, anything, about her.

Daniel just shrugged, and the clock struck half past four before I could try and combine my mediator-counselor skills further.

I couldn't help but wonder the whole time as I walked Daniel from my office to the parking lot, where his aunt was waiting for him, how Daniel had known the ghost. Had he seen her the night his mother was murdered? And did that mean he was a mediator or had it just been a one time ghost sighting? What were the chances of there being another mediator in the Carmel area, between me, Jesse, and Father Dom? Or, more likely, had Daniel known the ghost back when she'd been alive? And how so? Was the murder in the jewelry store more than a necessary take down of personnel unexpectedly present at the scene?

I tried not to look like I was too deep in thought, but I was still almost surprised that Jesse didn't demand a full explanation from me when I stole a goodbye kiss from him an hour later. I wouldn't see him again until later tonight as he was meeting up for dinner with some friends of his from the hospital, and I was going to have dinner with CeeCee and Adam at the Happy Medium.

Adam was in town for his younger sister's eighth birthday. He hadn't really gotten a chance to know her, since he'd gone to school out of state, and she hadn't existed while we were in high school. Sometime during our senior year, Adam's parents had announced that they were going to make good on their idea of having another kid. Adam's graduation present had been his parent's lack of presence as his mother was too busy in labor to see her son graduate.

Adam hadn't minded too much though. I knew he cared about his younger sister enough to take a break from being a lawyer and come back to Carmel for a few days every time she had another birthday.

The only person sitting at the table when I arrived at the Happy Medium a few minutes later was CeeCee though. She commented that Adam had just left for the restroom, and I decided to take advantage of his absence.

What I was going to do next was almost definitely a breach of counselor-patient confidentiality, but sometimes morals and laws had to take a back seat for the cause of the greater good. Besides, I figured Daniel wouldn't mind me getting one step closer to finding the woman who'd killed his mother.

I slid the picture Daniel had drawn of the ghost robber across the table to CeeCee.

"I didn't know you could draw, Suze," CeeCee said. "This is really good. Who is she?"

"I didn't draw it," I said, "And 'who is she' was what I was hoping you could help with."

CeeCee paused for a moment and then said, "This is whose obit you want?"

I nodded.

"This is a good picture, Suze, but do you know how databases work? You can't just put in a drawing into a search field and then watch as magic happens."

I had never been an ace with technology the way CeeCee was, but I still knew enough to know that I was asking for a lot.

"I'll make it worth your while. Gift card to the Apple store? Truckload of Thin Mints?"

"I'm more of a Samoa girl."

"Truckload of Samoas then," I said. "Look, I know it's a longshot, but I'll keep looking for more info, and if you keep looking through the database, then we should be able to come up with something between the two of us."

"OK, I'll keep looking. For the greater good, I'll keep looking," CeeCee said.

"That's the spirit," I said brightly, just as Adam rejoined our table.

"What's the spirit?" he asked.

Adam did not know about my mediation abilities, and, although he was nowhere near the skeptic at heart CeeCee was, he did not believe in ghosts as far as I knew. The truth was definitely not a valid explanation in this case.

"Just trying to persuade CeeCee to accept Hugo's hand in marriage," I said.

CeeCee rolled her eyes so hard, I was surprised they didn't fall out of her head. "For the last time, Suze, we're just friends."

"Who's Hugo?" Adam asked. And if I wasn't wrong, his tone sounded more than a bit cool.

"This guy I work with," CeeCee said offhandedly. "He used to go to the Mission."

"Oh," Adam said. "I remember him then. Hugo with the huge hands yet unfortunately small-."

"Adam," CeeCee said sharply. "I'm sure everything there is fine."

"You're sure?" Adam asked, emphasizing the word "sure" in a way that might as well have been him directly asking her if she'd had sex with Hugo.

I bit my lip as I realized I'd opened up a pretty big can of worms in my attempt to make sure Adam didn't find out about the spectral goings-on of Carmel.

"Whether or not I'm sure is between me and Hugo," CeeCee said.

Oh God. Was this going to happen? And with me sitting at the table and everything? As far as I could understand from what CeeCee had said, she and Adam had never really taken the time to talk out whatever the hell their on-and-off-but-mostly-off relationship was the last time they'd switched things to off. They had to realize that right now, with me still sitting there, unable to bail since my food hadn't even come out yet, was not good timing for their long overdue discussion.

As a small miracle, CeeCee's Aunt Pru approached the table next, bearing food.

She set a plate of sweet potato fries down in front of CeeCee, an avocado panini in front of Adam, and a pita wrap in front of me.

"Hmm," Aunt Pru said, surveying our table briefly. "I think things tonight are going to be a bit chilly, don't you think?"

As if you needed to be a psychic to sense the way the temperature surrounding our table had dropped a good ten degrees since Hugo's name had come up. The way our table felt now, undeniably chilly, must have been the same way it felt when non-mediators interacted with ghosts. Our table was effectively a cold spot.

I tried my best to make the table into a less hostile environment. After all, it was my bringing Hugo into the conversation that had made things so hostile in the first place. But my efforts were to no avail. Every new conversation topic I created inevitably followed the same path, a path whose destination was Hugo Braggart.

Once I finished my pita wrap and left Adam and CeeCee to continue talking, or arguing, I put the money for my wrap on the table and exited the Happy Medium alone. But I didn't make it so far as the car door to the Land Rover before I heard a voice calling to me from over my shoulder.

I wasn't surprised when I turned around to see a ghost. I wasn't even surprised that the ghost in question knew my name or that I was a mediator.

No, what surprised me was that I recognized this ghost. Because I'd read the police report on her death just yesterday.

My latest spectral client was none other Daniel's mother, Francesca Powell.


	7. Chapter 7

**Hush**

Seven

So when CeeCee's Aunt Pru said things were going to be a bit chilly tonight, this was what she must have meant.

The spirit of Francesca Powell was standing a few feet in front of me, next to the entrance of the Happy Medium. She had straight, listless brown hair and eyes that were as gray as her son's. Her face was very long and narrow, and the frown she was wearing made her look incredibly grim.

But then again, I would have been grim too if I'd been murdered by a thieving ghost.

"Are you Suze?" Francesca asked in a very timid voice. "He told me to come to you. He told me you were the only one who could help."

I took a quick look around to make sure that we were the only ones in the parking lot of the Happy Medium before I answered. It would smear my reputation as a counselor if I got caught talking to what appeared to be thin air, after all.

Once I had confirmed that the parking lot was indeed empty, aside from me and the ghost of Francesca Powell, I said, "Yes, I'm Suze. And my first question is, who is 'he?'"

Francesca shook her head. "I never got his name. But he must be about your age, I suppose."

I didn't press that subject further, but if he was my age and could see her, then she was probably talking about Paul-though I wasn't sure why she would've been in L.A., where Paul lived. My head hurt at the thought of him being involved in all of this. I hadn't had any contact with Paul since my wedding, and I wanted to keep it that way for as long as possible, with "as long as possible" being "forever."

"Look, Suze, my name is Francesca Powell," she said, "and I'm dead."

Francesca looked at me expectantly, as though I was supposed to find the fact that she was dead shocking news when I could see her spectral glow as plain as day. Between being a mediator and growing up in Brooklyn, there wasn't much of anything that I could call "shocking news" anymore.

"I've heard about you," I said. "You worked at that jewelry store down on Monte Verde Street. You were killed during a robbery."

"A robbery?" Francesca asked. "Is that what happened?"

"Are you telling me you don't know what happened?" I asked.

Francesca shook her head and didn't offer anything more on the subject.

"What happened that night, Francesca?" I asked. "What's the last thing you remember? Let's start there."

Francesca took a deep breath, which was completely unnecessary for her to do since she was dead and didn't need to breathe anymore, and said, "I had a horrible headache."

A horrible headache was an understatement. In the reports I'd found on her death, she'd died when something, likely a piece of broken off glass from one of the jewelry showcases, had gotten lodged very forcefully into her forehead. Lucky her if she'd managed to forget about that.

"And before that?" I asked. "Why were you at the store that night? After eleven?"

"I forgot to lock up that day," she said. "I was the last to leave, and I was in a rush to pick up my son from school, so I did everything but lock the front door. I didn't remember I'd left it unlocked until I was getting ready to go to bed that night. But when I did remember, I drove over with my son right away to lock it. And to check that nothing was out of place inside the store, since the door had been unlocked that whole time."

Francesca trailed off and then gave me an absolutely harrowed look. "My son was there. There was a robbery, and my son was there. Is he… Oh, God, is he alright?"

"He's fine," I said quickly. "Your son is fine."

For a given value of fine, at least.

"What happened after you got into the store?" I asked.

"I took a brief survey of the counters, and then I went to the cash register to make sure everything looked alright," she said.

"And then?"

"Then I came down with that horrible headache."

Then she got stabbed in the forehead by a ghost, she meant. I had no clue how she could've missed a piece of glass flying straight at her head, but she'd managed to do it somehow.

My next question was, "Why were you hanging around Los Angeles afterward instead of Carmel?"

"Los Angeles?" Francesca asked, and there was an ample amount of confusion in her voice.

"Los Angeles," I repeated. "You know, the place where you were when you met up with the guy who told you to come see me."

Francesca shook her head and was about to say something right as the doors to the Happy Medium burst open. It was CeeCee, who wouldn't think I was crazy if I told her I was busy talking to a ghost, but it made no difference. Francesca had already dematerialized in a shimmer of blue light.

"Men," CeeCee said. And she was very red in the face, which wasn't too difficult for her, given her albinism, but I could tell she was severely pissed.

"I'm really sorry about bringing Hugo up," I said. "Do you want to talk about it? You and Adam, I mean, not Hugo."

"It's not your fault. What happened in there was long overdue."

"What exactly happened in there after I left?" I asked.

"Later," CeeCee said. "We'll talk about it later."

And then she got into her car and drove off without another word.

I wasn't sure what kind of state Adam was going to be in when he left the Happy Medium, but I was guessing he wasn't going to be much better off than CeeCee was. I waited another couple of seconds to see if Francesca would reappear in the parking lot, and, when she didn't, I got in the Land Rover and headed home.

When I made it home a few minutes later, Jesse still wasn't back from his dinner, and I figured, he wasn't going to be back for a while. He'd left the clinic after I had, and, presumably, none of his friends were having relationship spats with each other. I didn't mind that he'd be coming home late though. There was one thing on my to-do list that I would have rather had finished before he got home.

I reached for my cell phone, opened up my phonebook, and pressed the call button on the contact listed as El Diablo.

The reason I hadn't just taken Paul's number out of my phone was because somehow, deep down, I knew that the day when I needed him to talk to him on mediator business out of my own volition would come. I was dreading that day, but there wasn't much I could do to avoid it.

Paul's greeting was nothing short of what I expected it to be.

"Tired of de Silva so soon? I guess all that wait just wasn't worth what he turned out in the bedroom, huh?"

Expected or not, I bristled anyway. After all these years, Paul still got under my skin with minimal effort.

"Everything in that department is fine," I said. "More than fine. Like, almost eight inches worth of fine."

I could practically hear Paul shudder through the phone before he said, "I did not need to know that."

"You were the one who wanted to knock my sex life. But I'm not calling you for sex. I'm calling you because I just got through speaking to a ghost who knows you."

"Oh. The chick I brought back, right? Are you calling me to complain or something? I thought you'd like it if I scooped her up and brought her back to this dimension, so you could go all do-gooder on her. Though knowing how low you're willing to stoop lately, I'm guessing you're mad because you were the one who exorcised her in the first place or something?"

"Brought back to this dimension?" I asked. "Wait a second, you found her in Shadowland?"

"Yeah, Suze," Paul said, and he used this slow voice like he was dealing with a cranky toddler. "Sometimes there are ghosts out in LA, too, you know. I pop in upstairs to drop one off, and there was a perfectly good one already waiting there. Go figure."

"So… You didn't exorcise her in the first place or anything?"

"I brought her out of that place, not put her there. Keep up, Suze. Letting de Silva screw you must've lowered your IQ or something."

He didn't say "screw," and neither did I when I told him to go screw himself a couple of seconds later.

"Didn't you hear I've got the hottest A-lister in Hollywood around to do that for me now?" Paul said.

I should've ended the conversation right there. I would have saved myself a lot of trouble if I had, but instead I said, "What's up with that anyway? I thought you said you weren't the marriage type."

"Jealous?"

"You wish. You really wish."

"What? You mad that we might follow in your and de Silva's footsteps and do the whole marriage thing with two point five abominable kids."

I didn't say anything for a moment. And not because Paul was right about me being jealous—because I most certainly was not. No. I didn't say anything because he'd used the word "abominable." For the record, I am not superstitious. Beyond ghosts, I do not bother myself with believing in anything supernatural, much to Father Dom and Jesse's chagrin. But I felt the same sinking sensation in my stomach that I'd gotten when Paul had told me that Jesse was cursed.

"You're not serious about the whole abomination thing, are you?"

"Whatever kids you and de Silva have are going to be demons. There is no doubt in my mind about it."

"I'm serious, Paul," I said sharply.

"What, are you already pregnant or something?"

I hesitated for a second too long in answering him, and my silence revealed enough.

"Well, shit. There's no turning back now. You've officially ruined your life," Paul said.

I wanted to tell him that if having kids ruined your life, he'd ruined his thrice over, but I restrained myself. Instead, I said, "Just tell me if it'll be cursed."

"Apart from the curse of being raised by you and de Silva? Nothing I can think of."

I thanked him, for getting Francesca to me and for confirming that the kid inside of me wasn't Rosemary's baby or something, and then I concluded our phone call with the very heartfelt suggestion of, "Go eat a dick."

After I hung up the phone, the first thing on my mind was how the hell did Francesca wind up exorcised. If it wasn't Paul, then I couldn't think of a single mediator out there who would bother with exorcising a non-violent spirit like Francesca. Which meant there must've been another mediator out there somewhere pulling some strings.

But why?

They say there are no coincidences in a murder investigation, and I've mediated enough murder victims to believe it. It must have had something to do with Francesca being murdered at the jewelry store that night. Someone must have wanted to, I don't know, keep her quiet? Keep her away from any mediators who might've tried to help her move on and inadvertently gain justice that would've spelled out incarceration for the living perpetrator?

But then that would've meant that our ghost robber wasn't working alone, unless a ghost could exorcise another ghost. And I didn't think they could. Maria Diego had needed Jack to do the exorcism for her when she'd wanted to exorcise Jesse, after all. So some mediator out there must've been helping behind the scenes. And it made sense.

God, why hadn't I seen it before? What would a ghost do with money? They were dead, also known as in a permanent state of having absolutely no need to accumulate wealth. The ghost robber must've made some kind of unholy alliance the likes of which the world hadn't seen since the nightmare team that was Paul Slater and Felix and Maria Diego.

The sinking sensation I felt in my stomach was so strong I initially mistook it for more nausea. If only I could've been that lucky. The truth of the matter was that what I was feeling stemmed solely from the fact that I was about to deal with something a hell of a lot trickier than I would have liked it to be.

I had to take a seat on the couch to gather my thoughts. I needed to think of a plan of action. I needed to figure out what I was going to do first. I needed to…

I needed to answer my phone apparently.

Jesse's name and photo, the one of him reading while my old rat, Romeo, lay on his shoulders, flashed across the screen. He must've sensed how I felt.

"Susannah, are you alright?" Jesse asked when I picked up the phone a few seconds later.

"I'm not in mortal peril from anything," I said quickly.

"That's an oddly specific denial."

"Isn't it what you want to hear?"

"Only if it's true, querida."

I sighed and said, "There's some ghost stuff going on, but it's nothing that can't wait until you get home."

"I'm on my way now," Jesse said. And I wasn't sure if his dinner had already been wrapping up or if he was leaving in the middle of appetizers or something. He hung up the phone before I could ask him anything else.

Jesse was home in less than fifteen minutes. He greeted me in the living room with concern in his voice, and he was clearly looking me over for any visible injuries.

"What's going on?" he asked.

And then I told him. Everything.

Or, most everything. I left out the part where I called Paul, for instance, and I also didn't mention anything not specifically related to the ghost girl, such as our unborn child. But I told him everything else.

"So every time this thief was mentioned and you either outright said that you hadn't started doing any investigation or otherwise left your efforts unmentioned, you were lying," Jesse said.

"The point here is that a ghost and a mediator are probably working together to knock off jewelry stores and murdered someone in the process," I said.

Jesse did not seem to share my opinion on this matter of what the point actually was.

"Are you always going to do this, Susannah? Keep things like this to yourself until you feel like you can't handle them alone?"

"It wasn't about keeping secrets. It was about acting quickly. If I hadn't acted when I did, then I wouldn't have caught a look at the ghost. Carmel's out of jewelry stores for it to rob now. And I was only holding off on telling you until Dr. Whitehall got settled in at the clinic like you wanted."

Jesse did not look satisfied with this answer.

"Is that everything?" he asked.

"Is what everything?"

"Is that everything you've been lying to me about?"

No was what I was thinking, but yes was what I said out loud.

And then I said, more genuinely this time, "Jesse, I'm really sorry. How about… If you forgive me, then I'll do that thing you really like tonight. You know, with my-."

I trailed off as I felt my phone buzz to alert me to a new text message.

 _You don't even understand how lucky you are. How beyond lucky. How the stars have all aligned for this moment to come into fruition lucky._ \- CeeCee

My phone buzzed again a moment later with a link to an obituary.

"Shit," I said. "It's her. It's the ghost girl I saw the other day."

Jesse walked over to me quickly and began to read the obituary along with me over my shoulder.

 _Alexa Jane Vanguard, 30, died May 2, 2016 at St. Francis Hospital after a long bout with lymphoma. Alexa was a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley and previously Robert Louis Stevenson High School. Alexa made the best of her short years on this Earth as a freelance fashion photographer and journalist. Her work has appeared in Marie Claire and Teen Vogue. Alexa is survived by her parents, Mr. Alexander Vanguard and Mrs. Samantha Vanguard, and her younger sister, Christina Vanguard. She will be dearly missed._

"Alexa Vanguard," I said. The picture of her in her obituary looked older than the person I'd seen in the jewelry store, but cancer patients typically came back a few years younger than when they died. Your body enters into ghost-hood at a time when you felt most alive, so I've never once encountered a ghost who looked like they were in the midst of chemotherapy.

"I'll call her," I said, "and we can settle this now."

"Are you hearing yourself right now, Susannah? You're just going to call up this ghost who has already proved herself more than capable of murdering someone? _Nombre de Dios_ , I have no idea how you survived by yourself in New York."

"I survived fine," I said. "Besides, you're with me now. And you're all big and strong, and I'm sure you will protect me from harm as any good nineteenth century gentleman would do for his lady."

"Well, actually, Susannah, I have been thinking it would be nice to have the house all to myself again, like old times."

I hit him in the arm, but he remained unfazed.

He said, "You're forgetting that this ghost is only one part of the problem. We need to find out whoever's helping her before we make it obvious that we're involved."

"So we pump our new friend Alexa for information," I said with a shrug.

"It'll be a lot harder to torture a ghost for information than it would be to torture a living human being. Given that ghosts can dematerialize and can heal themselves. A little more research, and then we'll act," Jesse said.

And we both knew he was right.

"Now," he said, in a decidedly different tone, "what was it you were saying earlier? About what you were promising me if I considered forgiving you?"


	8. Chapter 8

**Hush**

Eight

 **Note:** Sorry about the long time between updates. I went home and saw my family for the first time in almost a year! And then I got sick near immediately. And then I got sick again somehow? I'm pretty sure it had something to do with all the gross airport-ness during layovers and the recirculating air on 12 hour flights. Maybe.

At any rate, I'm going to switch from my ideal three updates a week system to a more sensible two updates a week system for the time being. So expect new material on Tuesday-ish and Friday-ish instead.

As a warning, this chapter is basically the length of two chapters. I couldn't find a good place in the middle to split it up, so things got pretty lengthy. The next chapter should be shorter and hopefully clock in at around 2,500 words. I make no promises though.

My Saturday was off to a bad start.

First of all, not telling Jesse I was pregnant was going to go down as one of my worse decisions. Or at least, that was what I was thinking as I hugged the toilet downstairs in the bathroom that used to belong to Mom and Andy. In the year and a half since we'd moved back in, we'd turned the space into a guest suite. Whenever Mom and Andy visited and didn't want to stay at Snail's Crossing, they stayed with us in the room they used to inhabit.

Right now, the only person inhabiting it was me though. And that was only because if I started puking in the bathroom upstairs, Jesse was going to get suspicious. And if Jesse got suspicious, he'd probably realize that I'd been lying about how I wasn't lying to him anymore. We would most certainly fight, and he would do his best to get in my way of punching our ghost robber, Alexa, right in the face.

Second of all, I wasn't going to be able to stay at home and lounge around and be nauseous at my own leisure. That just wasn't how a mediator's life operated. Because after Jesse and I had finished making up for what Father Dominic's phone call had interrupted yesterday, I did a little more snooping on our ghost.

More specifically, I went on Alexa Vanguard's Facebook page. I hadn't been on Facebook in ages, which meant I had to wade past a sea of notifications, friend requests, messages, and invites to play Candy Crush in order to make it to the search bar. We could've started our research on Alexa with someone in her obituary, her parents or her younger sister, but I had a hunch that they weren't going to have the answer we were looking for.

Because if Alexa's parents had the money to send her to Robert Louis Stevenson School, then they wouldn't need the funds from Alexa's jewelry heists. And since Alexa was dead and couldn't be using the money herself, she must have been taking it for someone else. Despite what horror movies might have people believe, most ghosts didn't get it into their heads to wreak havoc just for fun. There was typically a method to their madness.

So I took a stroll through her Facebook friends to see if I could identity anyone who looked like they might have come into wealth recently. And that was when I found Patrick Harrison.

I'd looked at his profile because he was wearing a shiny new watch on one of his wrists, something that was at odds with the fact that he'd gone to California State at Monterey Bay and Carmel Valley High School before that. People in Carmel who had money did not send their children to CVHS, on account of the fact that it was full of gangs, or at least it was full of gangs according to my mother. Personally, I doubted the prevalence of street gangs in Carmel, but parents, particularly conservative ones, were always on the lookout for the next moral panic.

After Patrick's stint at California State, he went on to become a web designer in downtown Monterey. Careers in the computer science industry probably made pretty good money, but, judging by the watch he was wearing, he would've needed engineering money before he could've afforded it.

And once I actually clicked on Patrick's profile, whose privacy settings were just as bad as Alexa's, I found out what ruined any possibility of relaxing.

There was picture after picture of the two of them together, and they dated back over a decade. There was a photo of him at his high school graduation with Alexa standing beside him while he wore his CVHS cap and gown. There was a photo of the two of them from his college years, when he'd grown an unfortunate mustache, and she apparently still didn't leave him because of it. There were photos of the two of them, more recent ones, where Alexa had lost her hair from chemo and Patrick had shaved his own head in solidarity. There was another photo, with only Alexa in the picture, dated back a little over a year ago and captioned with "She said yes."

But despite how deeply entwined Patrick and Alexa's Facebook profiles were, there hadn't been a single mention of Patrick, Alexa's apparent fiance, anywhere in her obituary.

Between that and the wrist watch, I felt like paying Patrick a visit up in Monterey was the most sensible mediator option I had. Even if the thought of working did nothing to curb my nausea.

Once my desire to vomit lulled, I flushed and turned to face the third reason my Saturday was off to a bad start: I was no longer the only person inhabiting the bathroom.

"Suze?"

It wasn't Jesse. First of all, Jesse never called me Suze. Second of all, Jesse wasn't a ghost anymore. It wasn't Francesca Powell either though because, third of all, neither Jesse nor Francesca Powell had ever had an ombre bob, to my knowledge.

The ghost standing in front of me was none other than the ghost I'd talked to a few days ago with the triplets, the likely victim of some sort of accident.

"Sorry to tell you this, but I still haven't been able to find anything else out about you," I said.

This was only sort of true. I hadn't found anything else about her, but that was mostly because I hadn't bothered looking since I'd seen her last. It was sometimes necessary to prioritize ghosts, and the homicidal ones always got my attention first. It wasn't fair to the lost soul standing in front of me, but it was a logical system that I didn't plan on ditching anytime soon.

Instead of getting frustrated with me or dematerializing, the ghost said, "That's OK. I came to you because I found out something about myself."

"What'd you find out?" I asked as I made my way over to the sink to wash my hands.

"Just about everything," she said proudly.

It was that answer that wound me up in the passenger side of the Land Rover a couple of hours later, with Jesse driving and the triplets in the backseat, ready for another lesson in our How to Mediate a Car Crash Victim series.

The triplets hadn't been too excited about the prospect of lessons on Saturday, even if it was a field trip, and so I had given them candy to placate them. This was a mistake. I could tell that it was most definitely a mistake by the way that they'd decided that, instead of listening to the radio, they wanted to become the radio themselves, and were currently belting every song from _Frozen_ at the top of their seven year old lungs.

Halfway through another reprise of "For the First Time in Forever," Mopsy stopped singing and started speaking instead.

"Aunt Suze, Uncle Jesse," she said. "Where are we going on a field trip to anyway?"

"State Route 1," I said.

"What's that?" Cottontail asked.

"The highway. You guys remember that ghost we talked to last lesson?" I asked. "I was talking to her this morning, and it turns out that she did die in a car accident. It just hasn't been reported yet."

"How come?" Flopsy asked.

"Because no one's seen the car. And the ghost doesn't know exactly where she crashed. So we're going to find the crash site ourselves."

"Is there going to be a dead body in the car?" Mopsy asked.

I didn't answer right away. A decomposing corpse was definitely going to get in the way of what my idea of a kid friendly mediator lesson entailed. I'd seen enough crime shows to know that a lot of maggots were going to be involved. And probably vultures.

Thankfully, Jesse stepped in to answer Mopsy's question for me. "If the ghost remembered waking up underwater, Emily, then her body is probably somewhere in the ocean."

Mopsy did not seem satisfied with this answer, and neither did Flopsy or Cottontail. Apparently, seeing a dead body would have been "really, really, really cool." They didn't spend more than a few minutes pouting, however, because they returned to singing "Do You Want to Build a Snowman?" with a level of zeal only achievable by children on a sugar high.

There was no further conversation in the car until we were cruising along State Route 1. That was when I decided that, if the triplets were going to learn anything from this "field trip," I'd better start explaining in more detail.

After I'd gotten their attention and they'd stopped singing, I said, "Sometimes being a mediator means having to go out and do fieldwork in order to make sure a ghost gets to wherever they're supposed to be going. That's what we're going to do today. Our ghost came by to tell me a lot more about herself this morning. For starters, her name is Elena."

"Elena," the triplets repeated experimentally, as though they were trying to taste the name on their tongues.

"Elena," I confirmed. "And she was going on a road trip by herself when she fell asleep at the wheel and lost control of her car. Why do you think she hasn't been reported missing yet?"

There was nothing but silence radiating from the backseat of the car. I took a look in the rearview mirror to see the girls, looking interested but also confused.

"I'll give you a hint," I said. "Road trip by herself."

When there was still no answer from any of the triplets, Jesse spoke up. "If Elena was traveling by herself, and no one expected to hear from her, would someone know that she was missing?"

"No," said Mopsy. "Everyone would just think she was having fun away from home."

"Exactly," Jesse said.

"Do I get more candy 'cause I knew the answer?"

A fight broke out briefly in the backseat over the possibility that Mopsy would get more candy without having to share any of it.

"No one is getting more candy," I said loudly, which caused Cottontail and Flopsy to quiet down and Mopsy to frown and slump slightly in her seat.

"Back to Elena," I continued. "No one thinks she's missing yet, so no one's looking. And no one's going to find her because she and her car are both somewhere underwater right now. But Elena does remember some stuff about where she crashed. She'd passed a gas station a few miles back. She'd just seen one of those memorial spots where people put flowers on the highway for someone who's died in an accident there. And the place where she crashed overlooked water. So what do you think we're doing out here now?"

The silence from the backseat this time was pointed instead of confused.

"No answers unless there's candy for answers," Mopsy said.

Flopsy and Cottontail quickly agreed.

I couldn't stop myself from rolling my eyes. "No more candy," I said. "But if you get this question right, we'll stop at a park on the way back for a little while."

I watched as the triplets silently tried to figure out if time at the park was worth giving up on the pursuit of more candy.

Eventually, Flopsy said, "Deal."

And then Cottontail said, "We're looking for a place on the highway with all that stuff you just said. Flowers and a gas station and water and stuff."

"Bingo," I said.

Instead of launching into celebration about the trip to the park they earned, they resumed their choral activities with a rousing rendition of "Bingo Was His Name-O."

By the time we were several miles deep into the highway, "Bingo Was His Name-O" became "Shake It Off," and the triplets were in a contest with each other to see who could shout "this sick beat" the most emphatically.

In my opinion, Flopsy was winning, but I wouldn't have dared to tell them that. Instead, I followed the progress of the car on Google Maps on my phone. State route 1, better known as the Pacific Coast Highway at parts, was notable for the fact that there were plenty of points along it where gas stations were far and few between, and, fittingly, it would be a couple more miles before we hit the first one.

It took us another hour to hit three more gas stations, and none of them fit all of the criteria Elena had described to me earlier. Furthermore, the triplets had become bored, restless, and were demanding obscene amounts of candy to compensate them for the fact that they couldn't think of any more Disney songs to sing. It hadn't been more than an hour and a half since we'd all pulled out of Brad and Debbie's driveway, but Jesse and I could both tell that any chances the day had at continuing to be a fruitful mediator lesson were long gone. So I stopped using my phone to look up gas stations, and I started using it to look up nearby parks instead.

Not only would a trip to the park be in line with what I promised, but it would also help burn out whatever sugar remained in their systems before I took them back to their house.

Once we'd stopped the car and unlocked the doors, they took off out of the backseat like a shot, screaming and making a beeline for the jungle gym.

Jesse and I got out of the car, much more calmly, and headed off for one of the park benches that was effectively designated for parents (and babysitting step-aunts and uncles).

I leaned my head on Jesse's shoulder to savor the lack of _Frozen_ songs and the feeling of the warm California sunshine on my face. I wish he would've brought a book with him, so he could've read to me. Before the clinic opened, he'd sort of been reading _A Hundred Years of Solitude_ , or _Cien años de soledad_ , to me. I say "sort of" because he was reading it in Spanish, and I had to stop him every now and again because I had no idea what was going on. I also say "sort of" because Jesse reading aloud in Spanish might as well have been foreplay. There was only so much reading that was going to get done before other, more fervent activities took place.

With my eyes half closed, faintly watching the girls as they left the jungle gym and tried to swing hard enough to, presumably, wrap themselves over the bar of the swing set, I was surprised to hear Jesse's voice.

"When do you want to start?" he asked.

"When do I want to start what?"

"Filling up all of those bedrooms back home," Jesse said. "We should start our own family."

I hesitated before I answered. This was the part where I was supposed to tell Jesse that the process of starting our own family was already underway. This was the part where I was supposed to reveal to him my actual diagnosis of my trip to the doctor a few days ago.

But when have I, Susannah de Silva née Simon, ever felt compelled to stick to the script?

"We already have our own family," I said. "You, me, and your baby."

"My baby?"

"Spike. How could you forget about him?"

"Right. Spike. How could I have forgotten? But I was thinking more along the lines of human children, querida."

He was smiling at me, in that lopsided manner, and I felt gripped by the urge to tell him everything.

I opened my mouth to speak, to tell him what I'd found out a couple of days ago, but as soon as I did, I heard very pronounced screams from the triplets as Mopsy released her grip on the chains of the swing and began to fly through the air.

Jesse and I swore with the same word simultaneously, me in English and him in Spanish, and rushed over.

As it turned out, twenty minutes later with us all piled back in the car and the energy level considerably lower, flying off the swing from as high as your seven year old body would take you resulted in skinned knees. Jesse gave her a stick of gum to blow bubbles with while he bandaged her up, and then we were headed back to Brad and Debbie's.

"What did we learn today?" I asked, as we pulled into the driveway to the triplet's house nearly a half hour later.

"Being a mediator is stupid," Mopsy said.

Instead of agreeing with her, like I wanted to, I said, "Sometimes there are boring parts to being a mediator. But you still have to do them."

None of the triplets agreed with me on this before they opened the car door and took off for the backyard. They passed by both Brad and Debbie on their way. Debbie was wearing her attire for hot yoga, a pair of leggings, a sports bra, and a towel around her neck.

"Thanks for looking after the girls for a little while," Brad said after he and Debbie made their way over to the Land Rover.

"It's nothing," Jesse said. "But Emily jumped off of the swing set today at the park, and she has a few bandages on her leg. It's not serious, but you'll want to change them tonight and apply some more Neosporin to prevent infection."

Brad nodded at that, but Debbie frowned.

"What about garlic?" she asked.

"What about garlic?" Jesse asked confusedly.

I tried not to facepalm as I realized that Debbie was opposed to Neosporin. Of course she was. It wasn't natural enough for her if she couldn't have gone to the farmer's market and picked all the ingredients herself.

"Can't you use garlic instead of Neosporin?"

Jesse said, in a very patient tone I knew was part of his bedside manner for his patients' more stubborn parents, "As a doctor, I would highly recommend Neosporin."

Debbie didn't look convinced though, and I was betting that Mopsy was going to smell like vampire repellant at our next meditation lesson.

"You guys want to stick around for lunch?" Brad asked.

Debbie glared at Brad without so much as bothering to be subtle about the fact that she loathed spending any more time with me than was absolutely necessary.

"We've actually got some plans of our own already," I said. "But thanks for the offer."

Likewise, Debbie didn't bother to mask her look of relief, and, as we peeled out of the driveway, I saw her swat Brad on the arm in a manner that clearly said, "What the hell were you thinking?"

Although I was just as repulsed as Debbie was by the idea of spending additional time together, Jesse and I did actually have plans-plans in Monterey with Patrick Harrison's name all over them.

Or at least, his last name all over them.

Harrison Designs was located in a business park in Monterey. Its space in comparison to the other businesses listed on the sign overlooking the road was tiny, and Patrick's office itself followed suit in size.

We hadn't had the time to call in first, but Patrick wasn't seeing any other clients. The only thing he was seeing was a full screen projection of an episode of _Mr. Robot_.

Jesse knocked on the frame of his office door, and Patrick scrambled quickly to exit the stream he was watching.

Patrick got out of his chair and walked the seven or eight steps between his desk and his door.

"Hi," Patrick said. "Is there something I can help you with maybe?"

"There is," Jesse said. "I run a clinic with my wife, and we're trying to find someone to create a website for us."

"You've come to the right place, Dr…"

"Jason Seaver."

Patrick shook Jesse's hand in earnest. Apparently, he had never seen an episode of _Growing Pains_.

The lack of recognition continued when I stook out my hand and said, "Maggie."

There was a glimmer of light as he moved forward slightly to shake my hand, and I couldn't help but notice the watch on Patrick's other wrist. It was the same watch he'd been wearing in his profile picture on Facebook.

"Nice watch," I said.

"Oh, this?" Patrick asked, glancing at his watch. "It was a gift."

I refrained myself from asking who, or where, it was from. If I was going to start asking questions like that, this visit was going to turn from a consultation to a full on mediator shakedown. And that didn't seem like a good idea in a business park where there would be plenty of witnesses to our brand of questioning.

Patrick indicated a couple of chairs crammed into his office space as a place for us to sit. The wall that had just been playing _Mr. Robot_ was positioned next to me. The chair was so close to it I wondered how the wall didn't have scuff marks.

"So what kind of medicine do you practice?" Patrick asked while he made several clicks on his computer and disabled its connection to the projector.

"Psychiatric," Jesse replied, just as Dr. Jason Seaver would have.

"Oh, that's… That's nice," Patrick said after an awkward pause.

A lot of things about Patrick looked a bit awkward. He'd tucked his button up into his chinos, but his shirt was still wrinkled. And he'd gone through the trouble of having tidy looking eyebrows, but the hair on his head was in a brown disarray. His handshake had been firm enough, but just a little too long. I wasn't entirely sure what a girl like Alexa, a young and rich fashion photographer with a penchant for theft and murder, saw in him.

"Never done a site for a psychiatric clinic before," Patrick said. "Uh… Not that I can't. It's just, I've only worked on other medical disciplines for websites before. Please don't worry. You're in good hands, I promise."

I was inclined to worry more whenever someone said "Please don't worry" in a tone like Patrick's, but, thankfully, we didn't actually want the website we were asking for. CeeCee had already done a stellar job on ours. And for free, might I add.

"So these are some of the other medical websites I've created," Patrick said. Instead of turning the projector on, which would've resulted in the computer screen imprinting itself all over me and Jesse instead of the wall, he turned his monitor around.

He went over a few websites with us, and it looked like he'd been telling the truth earlier. I was hardly a good judge of what a well designed website looked like, but everything he pulled up looked impressive enough. The second he started talking about his work, as opposed to making small talk, the number of filler words he used went down to zero, and he seemed more confident than he did awkward.

Maybe that was what Alexa had seen in him.

And then I saw Alexa.

She didn't enter the room as a ghost though. She showed up in a much less supernatural manner, as the background on Patrick's desktop.

"Oh," I said quickly, and Patrick paused to look at me, leaving his desktop up instead of switching windows to show us something else. "You're Alexa's Patrick."

Patrick looked confused momentarily before he said, "Oh. Alexa's. Yeah."

"I went to RLS with her. She was a few years ahead of me, but I knew her. My condolences. She was such a kind person."

I had no idea if Alexa had been kind or not while she was alive. The fact that she'd straight up murdered Francesca Powell with a piece of glass through her skull wasn't exactly supporting evidence for that idea.

"She was," Patrick agreed quietly. "But she'd been sick for a while. So it was only a matter of time until… I mean, even if we didn't want to say it out loud, we knew it was inevitable that she..."

Patrick trailed off and looked at me blankly, and for the first time in awhile, I felt guilty over something other than hiding information from Jesse. The vaguely out of place look Patrick had had for the duration of our consultation, aside from when he was showing us his work, was replaced with a look of sadness. If Alexa had been giving him cash or his current watch, then he certainly didn't know she had anything to do with it.

The watch, if it had come from one of the jewelry stores, must have been nothing more than pennies from heaven.

Patrick was silent for several long moments before he said, "So the consultation is free, but I charge $45 for every hour of work. The type of website you're looking at is fairly simple, so it shouldn't be more than six or so hours of work. You'd be looking at something just under the $300 range then, if that's alright with the two of you."

"That sounds reasonable," Jesse said. "Though we do intend to do a few more consultations before we settle on a creator for the website."

Patrick nodded but said, "You should know though, that it's on the lower end of the price spectrum. Sometimes you'll get designers who are asking for twice that, you know? I try to be as fair as I can. Um… While still being able to eat and everything."

"Of course, of course," Jesse said. "We're just shopping around."

A few moments later, we'd all stood, shook hands again, and then Jesse and I were on our way out of his office. I couldn't help but turn back and see Patrick, sitting at his desk again and staring at his computer wistfully.


	9. Chapter 9

**Hush**

Nine

 **Note:** There are 17 numbered chapters in my outline at the moment, so we are officially more than halfway through with this story. My favorite bits that I've written so far are still in the chapters ahead, so please hang in there!

The weekend didn't have any better news on any of the ghosts we were looking into. First of all, we hadn't gone for another long drive on Sunday, so there was no telling where Elena's body was. Second and third of all, we hadn't been able to get in touch with Daniel's mother, Francesca Powell. I didn't think there was any chance she'd move on, but Jesse had confirmed that he couldn't feel her out there anywhere.

I didn't think our conversation the other day was enough to make me move on, but I suppose it must have been. She got what she needed off of her chest and trusted me to handle the rest of it. Whatever satisfaction Francesca apparently felt was ruining our investigation though.

In fact, the investigation was going about as well as today's counseling session with Daniel. Which was to say, both were going horribly.

I'd handed Daniel paper and crayons what felt like ages ago, but he was only making idle marks on the page. He didn't look like he was in deep concentration and searching for his next muse. No. He just looked bored.

"You could write if you want," I suggested.

Daniel looked at me as idly as he had his paper and continued to trace lightly along it with a different color crayon, a blue one this time.

"Or I could teach you how to make a paper airplane," I said. "And then we could race them."

Daniel looked away from me and pressed the blue crayon harder into the paper. The message was clear: he did not want to listen to my suggestions anymore.

I wasn't sure exactly what my next move would be. I didn't think just sitting here in silence was going to be a good use of anyone's time. But before I could say anything else, I saw a shimmer of light appear at the door next to where Daniel and I were sitting.

"I'm going to make a quick bathroom trip," I said abruptly.

Aside from a small and nearly imperceptible nod, Daniel looked at me with indifference as I crossed from my chair quickly and opened the door. His expression probably would not have been so indifferent if he could see that I was being followed by the ghost of Elena Cho.

The break room was thankfully empty when I walked in. Most people did not respond well when they saw someone talking to what appeared to be thin air.

I stood with my back against the door to prevent someone from walking in without me knowing and said, in a low voice, "What's going on?"

"I found it," Elena said proudly.

"Found what?"

"You know, my body. The car."

"That's great," I said. "But I'm kind of at work right now, so I can't exactly do anything about it now."

"Oh," Elena said, and her voice sounded more than a bit dejected. "I mean, it's just… You always seem so busy, I didn't know now was worse than any other time. And especially since I've found my body now... I thought that would mean the end of things."

I winced. Elena's mediation had come as a casualty to Alexa's, and, if I were in her situation, I'd probably be upset if I felt I was being neglected, too.

"But your body and the car are still underwater somewhere. And pretty deep, too, right?"

Elena shook her head. "They were, but I moved them."

"You...moved them? Yourself?"

Elena was not the type of ghost who had the kinetic ability to go around moving cars and cadavers. She didn't have the anger for it, righteous or otherwise, and she hadn't been dead long enough to have the experience necessary.

"Is that not normal?" she asked. "I mean, everyone has latent psychokinetic abilities, right? If you just know how to tap into them. I think being a ghost helped."

Of course. Elena was one of those new age types. She had probably called her road trip a "vision quest" and planned on stopping off at a sweat lodge or something eventually. I wasn't opposed to the idea of finding oneself, but, as a Brooklyn native, the whole thing reeked of California.

"It's impressive," I said finally. "And I really am sorry about not being able to find your car earlier."

"It's fine. It's just… Well, I didn't think I'd still be here. I mean, I found myself and got my memory back and everything. Is this just what the rest of my life, well, existence, is going to look like?"

"No," I said. "Do you have family, Elena? Or anyone else you care about?"

She nodded.

"Well, I'm betting they want to know that you're not just taking a road trip. If you can get me a mile marker near your car, I can call in to the police station and say I saw an abandoned car on the shoulder."

"I can do that," Elena said.

And she dematerialized shortly thereafter.

As I exited the break room and re-entered my own office, I hoped she didn't come back for at least another fifteen minutes.

The reason why I was hoping she wouldn't come back, Daniel, was still seated with nothing but blank paper in front of him. His eyes met mine as I took my own chair again.

And then something unexpected happened.

"You see them, too," Daniel said.

His voice was so soft I almost hadn't heard him at first. Not to mention the fact that, even though I'd been working with him for exactly a week thus far, I had never once heard him speak. But once I got past the fact that Daniel had spoken to me, I replayed what he said in my mind several times.

"Ghosts," I said the word aloud, just so we could both be clear what the subject matter was. My voice was nearly as quiet as his was when I continued speaking. "Yeah. I see them, too."

Daniel didn't respond in words, but he was looking at me with rapt attention.

I said, "The first time I remember seeing a ghost I was about three. I didn't know what ghosts were, and I didn't know they were even different from regular people then. I tried to tell my mom, but of course she didn't listen to me. She can't see them. So I figured that ghosts just weren't something adults could see at all. Do you want to talk about the first time you saw a ghost, Daniel?"

Daniel shook his head. I was impressed enough with what he'd said already, so I didn't have a problem with humoring him and keeping up the conversation by myself. Except before I could tell him something else, about my dad or maybe even about how my mom had stuck me in therapy when I was younger, Daniel spoke.

"No one would believe me if I said anything."

"I believe you. But I can't say you're wrong about other people. What we are, most people don't understand it. Even though about half of the country believes that ghosts might exist, almost nobody would be cool with us just admitting we see them all the time."

Daniel was silent for a few moments. He opened and closed his mouth several times without saying anything at all, and I had to wonder if the words he'd already said were all the progress he'd made today.

"You can tell me anything, Daniel," I said soothingly. "Whatever it is, trust me when I say I'll understand and believe you. I've seen it all."

There was nothing Daniel could tell me that would be more difficult to swallow than resurrecting your ghostly one true love via time travel, but I didn't tell him that. But the longer he struggled to say whatever it is that he clearly wanted to say, the more I started to wonder if maybe I should have mentioned more of my own mediator tribulations.

Until he spoke again, that was.

"That night at the jewelry store," Daniel said. "I saw that, too."

I almost couldn't breathe. Here I was, standing on the precipice to what would solve this case, and I felt like I was seconds from falling. "The woman you drew the picture of the other day. That's where you knew her from."

Daniel nodded.

"She saw me. She saw me see her," Daniel whispered. And before I knew it, there were tears in his eyes. There was only paper and crayons between us though, not tissues, and I didn't want to leave where we were sitting to get up and get some. I was scared that if I moved, that if I changed anything about this moment at all, that Daniel would clam up again.

"It's alright," I said, as comfortingly as I could while not actually closing any of the space between us. Even though it looked like Daniel could use a hug, I couldn't actually give him one. Not as a professional counselor, at least.

Daniel shook his head. "She's the one who," he began, and he trailed off to look at the cast on his arm. It was no accident then. Alexa must have been what broke it. How had I not realized it before? The drawing he'd made of Alexa should have been a dead giveaway. There were no coincidences in a murder investigation, I'd said it myself, and yet I'd brushed it off and thought maybe he knew her from somewhere else.

"And she said she'd kill me if… If…"

"If you told? Daniel, you're safe. Nothing is going to happen to you. I'm going to handle her myself, and she won't be able to hurt anyone again."

"Don't be by yourself," Daniel whispered. "She's not by herself."

I wasn't going to be alone. I'd have Jesse there with me. But I didn't tell him that. Instead, I said, "What do you mean she's not by herself?"

Daniel didn't answer me-not with words, at least. He picked up a piece of paper from the table and a black crayon. And then a brown crayon. And then a gray one.

I watched him use and exchange at least a dozen different colors for at least ten minutes in silence. Typically, the silence that filled the room during our sessions was so languid it made me feel more like napping than doing my job. But the silence today felt as restless as I was.

Daniel slid the piece of paper across the table at me like he always did, and no further explanation was necessary for me to know exactly who I was looking out.

Patrick Harrison.

I swore before I could catch myself, and Daniel winced.

"Sorry about my language," I said quickly. "I'm not mad. I'm just surprised. I've been looking into this, and I spoke to him on Saturday. But I decided that he didn't have anything to do with it."

Daniel shifted uncomfortably.

"I believe you," I said, and then I said it two more times in an attempt to make him really believe it.

He didn't look convinced.

"I'm going to handle everything, Daniel. That's part of being a mediator when you're grown up. I've handled people a lot scarier than the woman you saw and her boyfriend. You've got nothing to worry about."

And I didn't know it then, although Daniel must have suspected it, but there really was a lot to be worried about.

I wanted to console him a little more, and, moreover, I didn't want to end our conversation here. It felt like I was halfway through climbing a mountain, and I wanted to keep going until I reached the summit. But there was less than a minute to go until 4:30, and I knew better than to keep Daniel's aunt waiting. She didn't exactly strike me as the patient type.

"We'll talk more next time, right?" I asked.

Daniel's response was non-verbal, but it was still a nod.

I led Daniel out front shortly after giving him some tissues, and his aunt was waiting for him in the lobby.

"Well?" she asked. "Has he said anything?"

Whether or not he said anything was between me and Daniel, as part of counselor-client confidentiality. If I told his aunt he'd talked to me, she'd either want to know what he talked to her about, which I absolutely could not tell her if I wanted to keep my counseling certification, or she'd start punishing him at home for not talking to her, which I didn't want Daniel to go through.

"Daniel has other ways of expressing himself," I offered.

Pauline looked at Daniel in a clear mix of disapproval and disappointment before she guided him by the shoulder from the clinic to the parking lot.

Once the door to the clinic had come to a close, I turned to Felipa.

"Do you know if Jesse has an appointment right now?" I asked.

Felipa minimized the browser window she had open, and opened up the appointment scheduling software instead. "Booked solid through to five thirty," she said.

I swore quietly under my breath, but not quietly enough for Felipa not to overhear me and point at the swear jar she kept on her desk.

After depositing a dollar into the jar, I made my way back to my office. I could wait until Jesse finished, an hour from now, or I could get to handling the Patrick problem now.

There was no question in my mind about what I should do.

I grabbed my cell phone to give Patrick a courtesy call.

I slowed down in my quest briefly though to glance at a couple of texts from CeeCee.

The first read:

 _So when are you going to start asking for the fine furniture related favors? Because the police are saying that this robbery is probably connected to the jewelry store ones._

Of course there were more robberies. He probably needed new furniture for his shoebox of an office.

The next couple of text messages from CeeCee were prefaced with:

 _What does this mean?!_

And they were followed by an assortment of screenshots of conversations between herself and Adam. I didn't make time to read them though. I didn't even make time to look at the police beat for what had been said about the furniture store robbery. The only thing I did before dialing the number to Patrick's business was go into my settings and mask my phone number.

"Harrison Designs," Patrick said.

I began speaking in a tone that was much brighter than how I actually felt. "Hi, this is Maggie Seaver. We met on Saturday, with the…"

"Psychiatric clinic website," he said quickly. "I remember. Are you calling to lock in?"

"Actually I'm calling to make an inquiry about the watch you were wearing."

"The watch I was…? Oh. I mean, it's not for sale or anything."

"Really? Wasn't it for sale before your fiance stole it?"

To his credit, he didn't hang up the phone immediately.

"Who the hell are you?" Patrick said. If talking about his passions made him more confident, then anger certainly suited him as well. "I Googled you guys, and unless there's another Dr. Jason Seaver in psychiatry other than the guy off of _Growing Pains_ , you lied to me when you came in."

"And you lied to me about that watch being a gift. Where'd you guys get it from? One of the stores off of Ocean Avenue? Or was it the one where your fiance bashed an innocent woman's face in and killed her?"

"I didn't do anything, and my fiance is dead. Do you think her ghost went and knocked off a jewelry store?"

"That's exactly what we both know happened."

And that was finally what did it. Patrick hung up the phone on me.


	10. Chapter 10

**Hush**

Ten

An hour and a half later, I was pacing the floor of the kitchen while Jesse sat at the table, much more calmly, and drank a glass of wine. He'd offered me a glass, but I declined it in favor of intermittent sips of water between paces.

"So Patrick is working with Alexa," I said. "Does that mean he's a mediator?"

"I'd assume so," Jesse said. "Otherwise, how would the two of them be communicating?"

"She could be, I don't know, leaving him signs or something. Writing him messages on paper. If she's good enough with her spectral powers to ram glass into someone's forehead, I'm sure she can pick up a pencil. Or a stick even. Then she could leave words in the sand or something."

"Or, much more likely, Patrick can communicate with the dead just as we can, and when Alexa died, he kept talking to her."

"But he looked so sad the other day. Would he have really looked like that if he was still talking to her everyday?"

Jesse looked at me skeptically before he said, "They loved each other but couldn't be together-not really. You tell me if that ever made you feel sad."

I paced even faster then. Jesse was right.

"Besides," he continued, "it didn't make any sense for Daniel's mother to move on while this ghost was still a danger. Patrick must have found her, after you talked to her, and exorcised her."

"Fine. He's a mediator," I said.

"Why are you so reluctant to admit that he's a mediator?" Jesse asked.

"Because first of all, there is no reason so many mediators should be in northern California. Not unless we're on some kind of spectral Hellmouth."

Jesse had never seen Buffy, but he didn't ask for an explanation.

I continued by saying, "There's you, me, Father Dom, the triplets, Daniel, and now Patrick. We could form a coalition. A union. We should basically have a civil rights movement at this point."

"I am sure you would make very creative picket signs," Jesse said, in a slight show of support but mostly in a show of sarcasm.

"The last time a mediator and a ghost were up to no good together was back when Paul…"

And I trailed off, but Jesse finished my sentence for me.

"Decided to form an alliance with my murderer and conspiring ex-fiance. I remember."

And what Jesse said was what I'd been about to say before I stopped myself short. Because I'd remembered something a little more recent.

"Don't get mad," I said.

Jesse raised an eyebrow at me. "How many times do I have to ask you not to tell me how I'm going to feel about something before you've said it?"

"It's a new detail to a story involving Paul," I said.

Jesse poured more wine into his glass and took a very long swig before he looked at me again. I tried my best not to roll my eyes, but I wasn't entirely sure I succeeded.

When Jesse lowered the glass from his lips, I spoke again.

"Remember back when I was in high school? Back when you were still a ghost? That time when I came home with mangled feet?"

"I remember."

"Yeah, well, it was more than just the fact that I hadn't broken my shoes in. That was the same day that…" and I hesitated briefly before I continued on quickly. It was better to fill in the blank myself than give Jesse the opportunity to do so. "That was the same day that Paul decided he'd make an advance on me."

Jesse took another long sip of wine and didn't say anything. I could tell he was mad but didn't want to admit it because then that would mean I'd guessed his emotions better than he had.

"What about that day?" he asked finally.

"He tried to stop me from leaving. So then this tough biker looking ghost guy came out of nowhere because apparently Paul had this guy on contract to do his evil bidding." Like keeping innocent school girls in proximity of the danger of Paul's lips.

"So you think Patrick might have Alexa on retainer as some sort of slave?"

"Ghostly minion," I said. "And I don't know what I think. Except… What we do know is that Patrick is getting all of the benefits out of the robberies with basically none of the risk. Alexa's the one doing the thieving and murdering on his behalf. She could be the Bonnie to his Clyde or…"

"Or she could be under his control," Jesse finished. "But can you see him controlling anyone? He didn't seem feeble to you at all when we met him?"

"I can't see him dating Alexa either, but he did. And he sounds like he's capable of a lot when he's angry."

"Do you want to try and summon her somewhere and talk to her?" Jesse asked.

I was the one to raise an eyebrow this time as I said, "You said summoning up a homicidal ghost was a dumb idea the other night."

"Things change," Jesse said with a shrug. "She could be a victim. There are plenty of people I've tended to at the hospital who were victimized in their relationships and did things they normally wouldn't have had they had their own agency."

I thought about that, and I nearly agreed with him. We could go someplace abandoned and talk to Alexa without her having to come into the primarily ghost-free sanctuary we tried to maintain our house as. But then my stomach lurched slightly.

I initially confused the sensation with morning sickness, and I almost started pacing my way into the nearest bathroom, when I realized that my unease was more mental than it was physical. If I was wrong and Alexa wasn't a victim, I would be putting our unborn child, who Jesse didn't even know about, in danger. If things went south and I had to give Alexa a one-way ticket to shadowland, I wasn't sure my body could handle it.

So I decided to play it safe.

"I'll try calling David first," I said. "He or Shahbaz might have some research done on ghostly minions."

I found David in my contacts as I kept working on the glass of water Jesse had poured for me earlier.

"Suze?" David said. "It's not Sunday. Is something wrong?"

"Am I not allowed to call my favorite stepbrother on weekdays?" I asked as I slid into a seat across from Jesse.

"Of course you are. It's just… You usually don't."

"You're right," I said sheepishly. "It's a ghost problem."

"It's about those robberies, isn't it? I saw the surveillance footage, and the first thing I thought of was a possible spectral presence. I should've asked about it yesterday, but…"

"Don't beat yourself up about it. Seriously. Me and Jesse are only just now starting to get to the bottom of things."

"Did you catch the ghost involved?"

"No. But we know who the ghost is. And we know who she's working with."

"Working with?"

Instead of explaining, I said, "What do you know about ghost minions?"

There was a long pause before David said, "Ghost...minions?"

"Ghost minions," I repeated. "Ghosts who do the bidding of living people. More specifically, mediators."

"I haven't come across anything like that in my research. Are you sure they exist?"

"Paul Slater had one," I said. "So maybe it's just a shifter thing?" I didn't like saying the word "shifter." It felt dirty to me-mostly because it was connected to Paul.

"Maybe…"

"Could you do me a favor?" I asked.

"Not if it's what I think you're going to ask me," David said quickly.

"David, Dave, come on. This is life or death. Someone already died in one of these robberies. Think of all the homicide you'd be preventing if you just asked him."

"I'm not asking Shahbaz."

Shahbaz was, at the moment, both his roommate and his ex-boyfriend, and things between the two of them had gotten frosty as of late.

"Think about it, David," I said. "The two of you get to talking about ancient prophecies, one thing leads to another, and you know."

David was silent for a full minute, and I pulled my phone away from my ear to check that our connection hadn't been broken.

Finally, he said, "Is that how you think foreplay for gay sex works?"

I nearly spat out my water. "I meant maybe you'd talk about your relationship or something," I said.

"Oh," David said. "He spilled beer on my laptop while I was working on my thesis the other day. And I didn't have the section I was working on saved in the cloud yet. It's too late for us, Suze."

David was working on his thesis in his fifth year of school at Harvard because he had decided, a few semesters ago, it would be nice to take on an entirely different major in addition to Computer Science. The second major he added on didn't actually exist at the college, so he forged a course of study for himself. In parapsychology.

"Fine," I relented. "You don't have to ask Shahbaz, but keep a lookout, OK?"

"I will," David said, and there was a moment of hesitation before he went on to say, "Does Jesse know about everything this time? If I accidentally tell him, you're not going to be mad, are you?"

"I wasn't mad last time. You were right to tell him in the end. And he would've been too stubborn to let it go once he figured you were hiding something."

Jesse, who had been listening one-sidedly to the progression of my conversation with David, grinned sheepishly at me. He knew I was talking about him.

I ended my call with David shortly after that, once we'd promised to talk on Sunday like usual.

"What did David say?" Jesse asked.

"Nothing useful. He and Shahbaz ended on a bad note and haven't gotten any better, so there's no telling if he has research about this or not. Maybe you should go and seduce Shahbaz and-."

The look Jesse gave me was so reproachful I didn't bother finishing my sentence.

"If Plan A didn't work, and you're not committed enough to do Plan B," I said as Jesse rolled his eyes, "then Plan C it is."

"And what, might I ask, is Plan C? Summoning the ghost?"

"No. We're going to have to summon the devil himself."

Jesse groaned. "Are you sure you wouldn't rather just summon Alexa? You talking to Slater will only encourage him."

"Paul's engaged now. To a rich and famous model slash actress. He's not interested anymore," I said. I was lying to Jesse and almost to myself as the words left my mouth. I felt like we could all be in a retirement home years from now, and Paul would still be sending me flowers whenever he saw fit.

"Sure," Jesse said sarcastically, probably picturing a geriatric Paul trying to lure me away with gifts, too.

"If it makes you feel better, you can be involved every step of the way," I said. I was already looking through my contacts for El Diablo and hit the call button as soon as I found Paul's phone number. The ringback tone sounded across the room a few seconds later.

"See," I said, "it's on speaker."

Paul picked up a couple of seconds later.

"Suze," he said. "To what do I owe the pleasure this time?"

The way he said "pleasure" made me shudder and made Jesse looked even more annoyed than he had before.

"You're on speakerphone, Paul," I said. "Say hi to Jesse."

Paul didn't say anything for a moment, and I wondered if he was rethinking his previous strategy of sexually harassing me. Jesse wasn't in front of him or anything, but I bet when someone does as much damage to your face as Jesse had (the broken nose in Shadowland, the concussion and other damages from Brad's failed hot tub party, the punch in the face back when we were in the 1850s, and the broken jaw from November before last made four times if I wasn't wrong) you learn to fear them instinctually.

Strategy change seemed more or less an accurate description for what happened. His voice lost its more seductive edge and became much more straightforward.

"Well, I guess that means I can tell him congratulations."

"Congratulations on what?" Jesse asked.

My stomach dropped down to my shoes.

"Congratulations on the whole marriage thing," I said. "I mean, it's his first time speaking to you since…" Since that time you broke his jaw and probably would've gotten locked up for a few years had I not blackmailed him to get you out.

"Wait, wait, wait," Paul said, and I could hear the glee in his voice as he dragged out his words. "You're telling me de Silva doesn't know yet?"

I tried to reach for the phone to cut him off, but Jesse's hand cupped it and held it out of my reach.

"I don't know what yet?" Jesse asked, his eyes narrowed.

Paul didn't answer him though. He just kept gloating.

"I really would've thought the two of you would've worked on your communication skills by now. Did you know that failure to communicate properly is a leading cause of divorce? I know Suze has to know that, since she's supposed to be a psychologist or whatever. I guess you'll just have to hope that she teaches your kid better."

Jesse froze.

"Kid?" he repeated.

He looked at me for confirmation, but I couldn't meet his eyes.

"Shit, I meant to hold off on letting you figure it out for another couple of minutes. But congratulations on your impending fatherhood and your continuing marriage to your lying wife."

If Paul had been in the room with us physically, he would've had yet another bone broken courtesy of Jesse. But since he wasn't, Jesse just said a nasty swear word and pressed the end call button. It was strange because, even though I knew we were about to have a massive argument, all I could think about was how much more satisfying it would have been to hang up angrily on Paul back when angrily hanging up meant physically slamming a phone down on to the receiver. Pressing a little red touch screen button had nowhere near as much of a therapeutic effect.

He stared at the phone for a few moments before his gaze shifted to mine.

I swallowed nervously. He looked pissed.


	11. Chapter 11

**Hush**

Eleven

"You're not mad about anything though, are you?" I asked. I tried halfheartedly to bat my eyelashes at him, but I knew that we were going to argue at this point, and there was nothing my feminine wiles would be able to do about it.

"Am I mad about what? About the fact that Paul Slater knew you were pregnant before I did? Am I mad about the fact that you didn't seem to have any intention of telling me we were going to have a child anytime in the near future? Am I mad about the fact that I asked you if there was anything else you were keeping from me the other day, and you lied to me and said no? Or am I mad about the fact that once again, you decided it would be better to plot behind my back than be honest with me? Because I'm not mad about any of that."

"Could've fooled me," I muttered.

"I'm furious," Jesse said. And I knew he was furious because he'd gone to a very strange place with me, where he hadn't said a single swear word in Spanish, and his eyes had gotten steely.

There was a long stretch of silence where I couldn't meet his eyes anymore, and I swallowed uncomfortably.

"Who else knows, Susannah?" Jesse asked.

"About what?"

"About the baby. What else?"

"Just me. And you. And Paul," I added Paul's name begrudgingly.

"How far along are you?" he asked, running a hand through his thick hair in frustration. It was one of his favorite gestures for when he dealt with me while he felt like I was being difficult.

"About seven weeks now, I guess."

"You need prenatal vitamins."

"I've been getting them," I said. "Uh… I guess you should add Dr. Morgan from St. Francis to the list of people who know."

Jesse's next word was a swear word in English bad enough to earn him a five dollar donation to the swear jar. "So now half the hospital knew before I did," he said.

"I'm sorry you weren't the first person to know," I said.

"How did that," and here Jesse inserted a word in Spanish that could either mean male goat, asshat, or, most typically, Paul Slater, "find out before I did? When did you talk to him?"

"After Francesca Powell showed up. She'd had a run in with him, so I wanted to know what had happened," I said.

"So there was something else you kept from me when I asked you if you were being honest," Jesse said in a tone that was falsely pleasant.

I winced. "The only reason Paul knows is because he made this comment like you and I were going to have cursed kids, so I asked him if it was true, and he ended up figuring everything out. I only didn't tell you because I know you hate Paul, and what sense was there in upsetting you over nothing?"

Jesse didn't say anything for a while, and I wondered if that was it. It hadn't been anywhere near as bad as the fight I'd been expecting, but I was grateful for it. And the fact that he knew now felt like a weight off of my chest. Even if he got all over protective, at least I wouldn't have to hide the fact that I felt nauseous half the time from him. Everything was looking up.

Until he said, in a voice that was completely grave and devoid of any humor, "Why don't you trust me?"

And that caught me off guard.

"I do trust you," I said. "With my life. You know that."

"Do I?" Jesse asked. "Because you always seem to be interested in keeping things from me. When have I ever treated you like you it was my right to lie to you just because I might not like your response?"

"You're making this sound worse than it is," I said, and I tried to keep my tone light, but some emotion seeped into it anyway.

"I'm making it sound exactly like it is," Jesse said. "What do you plan on hiding from me next? What else are you hiding from me now?"

"I'm not hiding anything," I said indignantly.

"And now the problem is that I can't believe your answer."

I didn't know what to say to that. Because I did lie to him sometimes. It was never out of malicious intent, but it still happened sometimes, and over big things, regardless.

Instead of arguing for myself, I said, "Let's not fight about this. Can't we just take this time to celebrate? We're going to have a baby."

I tried to make my tone as bright as I could, but it wasn't convincing enough for Jesse to buy it. Instead of forgiving me or smiling or doing anything remotely peaceable, Jesse took another sip of wine.

"You're not going to get involved with this ghost anymore," he said. "If she or Patrick were willing to commit murder and assault a child, there's no telling what they might do to you."

I bristled.

"This is why I held off on telling you. I wasn't trying to keep anything from you. I just knew you'd get like this, and you wouldn't let me do my job. I can take care of myself, and I can take care of Alexa or Patrick or whoever comes along next who needs their ass kicked."

Jesse sighed and didn't say anything for a couple of seconds. Finally, he said, "I know you think it's 'macho,' but can you seriously blame me for wanting to keep you, and our child, safe?"

"Not really," I said, a little reluctantly.

A moment of silence passed where I wasn't sure where we stood with each other. Were we still arguing? Was he still upset? There wasn't much I could think of that I hated more than fighting with Jesse.

I felt his hand against my own a few seconds later. I had my head propped against my left hand, but I straightened up as he took it, along with my other hand, which was resting on the tabletop, into his own. His hands felt warm and safe, and I looked at them stupidly for a few moments before I looked up into his face. The corners of Jesse's lips were turned upward slightly into a small smile.

"What?" I asked.

His soft smile turned into a lopsided grin, the kind where I knew he was going to tease me about something.

"Am I not allowed to be happy now?" he asked. "What happened to what you were saying earlier, about how we should be celebrating?"

And I couldn't help but grin back at him.

Jesse laughed and gave my hands a slight squeeze. "I can't believe it. Less than eight months from now, I'm going to be a father. I never could've imagined…"

And then he smiled at me so broadly I felt like my heart was going to burst. I could faintly smell him from across the table, vanilla and old books, and I could still feel the warmth of his hands in mine. For a second, I was so blindingly happy I felt entirely invincible.

I was wrong about being invincible, of course, but I wouldn't know how wrong until later.

"We'll have to start buying things for one of the rooms upstairs," I said. "Babies need a lot of stuff."

"We'll worry about that later. For now, I'm worried about you and this ghost. And whatever ghost should appear next, for that matter."

I groaned as I felt my happy mood dissipate slightly. "I told you I can still handle everything," I said.

"You say that, but a few months from now I'm sure you'll come to disagree. You've already been experiencing morning sickness. That should fade, but as you progress, your respiratory rate will increase, so you'll start to feel more out of breath. Not to mention how your internal organs will start to shift to accommodate the baby. And the relation of the uterus to the bladder and the pelvis means you'll have to urinate more frequently and probably experience constipation, respectively. And none of this includes hormonal changes."

"I thought you were a pediatrician, not an OB GYN," I said sourly.

"This may be hard to believe, querida, but they teach us a lot in medical school. For example, physical trauma, including trauma caused by the undead, can result in miscarriage."

"Your textbooks talked about physical trauma induced by ghosts?"

Jesse ignored that and said, "I want you to take it easy with ghosts until…January."

"January?"

"If you carry to full term, your delivery date should be sometime in January."

"Oh," I said. For some reason, I hadn't even thought that far ahead. January. That was when our lives were going to change irrevocably. "So Penelope will be a winter baby."

"Don't even joke about naming our child Penelope. And don't think you're distracting me from the matter at hand either."

"Who said anything about distracting? Penelope and I have done nothing wrong."

"You and our yet to be named child will be staying as far away from ghosts as possible. We both know that they're unpredictable, powerful, and more than you should be dealing with while pregnant."

I didn't like being told what to do, but I couldn't exactly argue with Jesse when he had a point. Never underestimate an NCDP was one of the golden rules I taught the triplets at mediator lessons, so I knew that he was right about ghosts being unpredictable and powerful.

"Fine," I said. "Until January, I'll leave all matters of a spectral nature to you."

Jesse looked at me in satisfaction. But a moment later he looked annoyed, and then he wasn't looking at me at all.

I was confused until I heard a voice from behind me say, "You shouldn't ask her to make promises she can't keep."

I had been surprised to hear her voice, but I wasn't surprised when I turned in my chair to see Alexa standing with us in the kitchen.

The glimpse I'd caught of Alexa in the jewelry store and in her obituary didn't do justice to Alexa when she was in her prime. There was no evidence of the cancer that had ravaged her body. Her hair was long, wavy, and full of body, and her skin had no visible pores and was perfectly tanned from time spent more than likely frolicking at Carmel Beach.

"Relax," she said. "I didn't mean she was in any trouble from me. It's just that I'm not the only ghost out there, you know."

That didn't convince Jesse, and for that matter, it didn't convince me either.

"Let me level with you. I'm only here for a chat. Mind if I grab some wine?"

"We mind," I said.

But Alexa wasn't listening to me. Or, at least she didn't care, if she was listening to me. She turned her back to us and began to open and close the cabinets and drawers of the kitchen without lifting a finger. She did it all with telekinesis and, impressively, without slamming anything. She methodically opened everything until she found the cabinet with the wine glasses.

She chose a glass, and it floated through the air lazily until it came to rest on the table. The wine bottle moved next until it poured an elegantly stream into her glass and then swiftly followed by topping off Jesse's glass as well.

"More water, Susannah?" Alexa asked. "I did a little snooping of my own, but would you prefer it if I kept calling you Maggie?"

I gritted my teeth. "I'd prefer it if-."

"If you explained to us why you came here," Jesse interrupted.

He shot me a warning look, and I realized he was probably trying to keep me from saying something hasty that would result in her becoming violent. His hands were no longer in mine, and I watched as he eyed the distance between myself and Alexa, which was admittedly a lot closer than I would've liked it to be.

"Sure," Alexa said. "I'm here because the two of you, especially Susannah, have been in contact with Patrick recently. Accusing him of things. Trying to worm your way into finding out more about him. Sticking your noses where they don't belong, basically."

"We're mediators, and you're a ghost," I said. "Trust me when I say it's our business. You should have moved on to wherever it is you're supposed to go after you die. In your case, Hell or being reincarnated as a tree slug somewhere."

Alexa fixed her gaze on me, and it felt as though her eyes were actually piercing through my skin. "What I should have done," she said, in a very slow and precise voice, "is none of your goddamn business."

Before Jesse or I could say anything else, one of the drawers opened and then a knife, knives, three of them, suddenly went flying at top speed. It was too quick for us to do anything in response, and the knives found their target less than two seconds after Alexa had used her spectral powers to throw them.

There were three holes in the wall behind Jesse. From where he sat, they made points around his head in the shape of a triangle.

Pissed was an understatement of how I currently felt. I didn't care if I was pregnant or not. Alexa was about to get her ass handed to her.

Until she spoke in a tone so dark I felt a chill run down to the base of my spine.

"Let this be a warning to you. Stay-away-from Patrick."

And just like that, she was gone.

"Well," I said a few seconds later while Jesse took to removing the knives from the wall, "let's scrap that ghostly minion theory."


	12. Chapter 12

**Hush**

Twelve

 **Content Warning:** Violence

"I'm coming with you," I said.

"There is absolutely no way you're coming with me," Jesse said, and he closed the last button on his blue oxford shirt.

"I've got to go into work at some point. I might as well just go with you-save money, save the planet, and save you in case things get dicey."

Jesse gave me a wry smile. "I don't need you to save me, querida. And besides, I'm not going to exorcise the ghost at the clinic."

I narrowed my eyes in confusion. "Why not?"

"Property damage," Jesse replied.

"Well, where the hell are you going to exorcise her? At the Mission? They can only replace that statue of Junipero Serra so many times, you know. We really shouldn't make getting it knocked over by angry spirits a family tradition."

"I'm only going by the Mission to get the supplies for the exorcism. And then I'm going to perform it on the beach."

"There might be people out there, watching the sunrise or something."

"Not Carmel Beach. I'm thinking about the beach where those vengeful students died."

It took me a moment to remember the RLS Angels, but when I did, I said, "Jesse, there are snakes down there."

Jesse laughed. "There are no snakes down there, Susannah. That was just your imagination."

"I know what I felt," I mumbled.

Jesse put his hands on my shoulders and looked straight into my eyes as he spoke next. "I'll see you at work. I'll be on time. You'll be on time. And everything will be taken care of, querida," Jesse said. And then he kissed me.

When Jesse said things like that, he sounded so confident I couldn't help but believe him. Everything would be taken care of. Everything would be OK.

I shouldn't have believed him. I might've been prepared for what was going to happen if I hadn't believe him. But I did believe him at the time, so I climbed back into bed.

I couldn't sleep even though I was tired and there was still moonlight streaming in through the bay window. How could I sleep when Jesse was out there performing an exorcism on Alexa by himself? She was strong, but even more importantly, she was talented. Even when she was pissed at me, not a single one of those knives strayed so much as half an inch off of her intended mark in the wall.

Alexa had been a ghost for over a year now, but even then her powers were prodigious. Most younger ghosts relied on powerful emotions, typically anger, for their strength. Maybe Alexa was some new ager like Elena Cho. Although the people who got called new age were probably not the same people getting called murderers and jewelry store thieves.

I tried not to worry, but the fact that I did could hardly be blamed. I should have followed him. At this point, I could probably still head him off before he made it to the beach. The idea of going down there in the dark by myself was harrowing, but it was better than something happening to Jesse. No matter what Jesse might have thought, he could need saving sometimes. He was mortal again now-and had been for around a decade.

My phone buzzed, and I saw I had a message from Jesse.

It did not say what I wished it would've said, something along the lines of "mission accomplished" or whatever the equivalent of that was in Spanish. Instead, his message read:

 _No. Me. Siga._

Right as I was typing "siga" into my Spanish translation app, another message came through:

" _Don't follow me."_

Jesse knew me better than I would have liked him to sometimes. If he was texting, something that he never did when he was driving, then he had either made it to the Mission or he was at the beach already.

The sunrise began to come in pink through the window and slowly bathed the room in warm, gentle light. If it was dawn, then matins would have already been underway. Jesse had probably gotten what he needed for the exorcism already and was at the beach. I'd be too late to tail him.

I tried to take my mind off of the exorcism that would soon be in progress by helping CeeCee decipher the text messages that Adam had sent her yesterday. There wasn't that much to be deciphered if you asked me though. Adam seemed to be asking her on a date under the assumption that she would accept his invitation.

I was halfway through texting her to inform her of this when my phone buzzed.

 _El exorcismo fue un éxito._

It took me a couple of seconds to decode Jesse's Spanish. And then I still had to look up "un éxito" to confirm what it meant. I smiled when I figured out that, apparently, the exorcism was a success.

My response was _excelente_ , followed by a mess of exclamation marks that probably weren't necessary.

I switched screens, sent off the message to CeeCee, and then noted that there was still nearly an hour to go before seven. I could definitely take a quick nap and still be more or less on time for work.

My eyes fell closed of their own accord. After all, there was nothing to worry about anymore-at least not so far as Alexa herself went. Patrick would be a different situation. We'd have to figure out a way to make sure the police could pin the crimes on him, and that wasn't going to be easy. But the most important thing, for now at least, was that Alexa had been handled.

Or at least, I thought she had been.

My eyes opened suddenly as a chilly sensation rolled down my back. It was how I usually felt when I was in the presence of a member of the undead.

"Good morning, Susannah," Alexa cooed at me from the foot of the bed.

I was dumbstruck. "How," I said. "Jesse just-."

"Jesse just tried to," she corrected. "He was very determined, what with all of the Latin and the holy water, but he didn't know how difficult I am to get rid of."

I swung my legs out over the side of the bed in an attempt to gain some distance from her, but I stumbled to the floor as something hit me hard. I looked up to see Alexa still sitting calmly as one of the pillows from the bed hovered next to her.

"Believe me when I say I didn't really want to have to do this. Things like this only happen to people who get in my way."

"Things like murder?" I asked as I started to draw myself up from the floor.

The pillow came down on me near immediately with a force that pillows should not have been allowed to exert.

"You're not wrong though," Alexa said with a tranquility that contrasted the fury she'd put into the pillow. "Murder, in your case, and walking in to find your lover tragically murdered, in your husband's case, should send a pretty clear message to him."

Alexa's plan was completely bullshit. If she murdered me, Jesse was going to come after her with a vengeance, not back off. I didn't tell her that though. What if she got it in her head to murder him, too? He'd be caught off guard since he thought he'd exorcised her.

Alexa's plan was also complete bullshit because I wasn't going to let someone who thought pillows made an acceptable weapon murder me. It just didn't work like that.

I surged upwards, more quickly than she'd been expecting, and grabbed the pillow that was situated beside her with one hand. I could see the surprise in her eyes as I landed a punch right in her face with the other. And then I straddled her, pressing the pillow to her face and holding down until she lost consciousness.

Or at least, that was the plan.

Because a few seconds later, I realized that I wasn't straddling anything but the bed anymore. Alexa had dematerialized from right beneath me.

She must have realized that I was not going to lie down and accept death and made a hasty retreat. There was no sign of her in the room, and no sign that she'd ever been present except for the pillow's change in position and the way the sheets and comforter dragged on the floor slightly from where I'd tried to hastily get out of bed.

I closed my eyes as a headache began to set in. My mind was racing, and I felt sick-both with nausea and with worry. Because there was something else bothering me besides the fact that I'd just had a run in with an angry ghost.

Aside from the fact that angry spirits should not have been able to have access to the house, what with all the precautions Jesse and I had taken, Alexa had gotten out of shadowland much too quickly. How could Patrick have come to her rescue in such a short period of time? The way mediator-ghost connections worked, when the mediator and the ghost were in love, at least, was that the ghost had a heightened sense of awareness in regards to the mediator. The connection did not work the other way around. For example, back when Jesse had been exorcised, it took Jack calling me to let me know he'd done it himself before I knew what had happened to Jesse.

Jesse.

I should definitely call him to let him know that Alexa wasn't locked up in that foggy purgatory anymore. She might've left me to my own devices only to pursue him.

I opened my eyes and began to reach for my phone when the door to the room burst open.

For a second, I thought it was Jesse. He must've sensed that I was in danger and come running, as he typically did whenever his Susannah Senses were tingling.

But I was wrong.

There was no one at the door. There was no way it could've slammed open so dramatically of its own accord though, so I tensed. Alexa was back, if she'd ever left, and we were about to start round two.

I stood and began to edge my way towards the closet, where I kept my mediating gear. What Alexa could use this time was a nice dose of brass knuckles into her skull. That might persuade her to take a break.

I didn't make it more than three steps towards the closet before the doorway wasn't empty anymore. A collection of knives from the kitchen glimmered slightly from the gray morning light caught in the doorframe to the bedroom. This army of knives was more motivation to make sure I was armed too, but I didn't make it any closer to the closet.

The sound of "Someone Saved My Life Tonight" distracted me momentarily, and Alexa was behind me in an instant. One of her hands wrapped itself very tightly around my throat.

Let me say this, ghost strength is a confusing thing. I didn't know if Alexa knew the first thing about fighting. She'd been a photographer from a wealthy family when she was alive, so I would hazard a guess that she didn't. But ghosts have an entire reservoir of strength to tap into when they're in the zone. And it doesn't take particularly good technique to choke someone so much as it takes some arm muscle and willpower.

Alexa wasn't using all of her willpower to strangle me though. The knives in the doorway under her control glimmered more as they began to quickly move towards me.

I was a little embarrassed at what I had to do next. Because I've been in the mediator game for a long time, and I really would have liked to say my technique had improved over the years. But I bit into Alexa's arm with all the force and finesse they'd taught us to use in elementary school if someone should try and kidnap you.

Alexa's arm loosened, though she didn't remove her grasp on me entirely. I jabbed my elbow into her stomach-hard, and she doubled over. The knives in the doorway drooped and then fell entirely as she spluttered behind me.

"Do you have any idea how stupid you are?" I asked as I crossed the length of the room quickly. I knelt and picked up all four of the knives Alexa had been controlling. "Let's say your plan worked and you killed me. Did you ever think that through? Do you really think I'd just drop off the map and let you go on a robbery-murder spree with your fiance?"

Alexa was still doubled over, and I took the liberty of making sure she stayed that way for a while. I took one of the knives I was holding and rammed it straight through the back of her neck. Alexa was still for several moments until she reached around, with shaky hands, to remove the knife from her neck.

I didn't stop her from doing it. After all, she needed to hear what I had to say.

"If you kill me Alexa, or if you kill Jesse for that matter, we will come back as ghosts. And we will completely wreck your shit. If you think I'm getting in the way now, then you don't even want to start to imagine what I'd be capable of doing to you if death wasn't on the table for me anymore."

With the first knife out of her neck, I took the pleasure of ramming a new one in there. I removed it myself this time though, and I plucked the first knife from Alexa's hands as well. Hopefully, she had heard my message loud and clear. She was not going to win today. Or any day, for that matter.

Alexa dematerialized, and I dropped the knives and scooped up my phone from the bed as "Someone Saved My Life Tonight" started to play again.

"It's under control," I said quickly, before Jesse could ask how I was.

"What happened? I'm on my way home now, but I could feel that you were in danger."

"Alexa is apparently spectral herpes."

Jesse didn't say anything, and for a second I was worried Alexa was with him.

"Jesse?" I asked.

"'Spectral herpes?'" he said finally, and the confusion in his voice was evident.

I sat down on the bed, cross legged, and said, "You're a doctor, Jesse. C'mon. What's herpes?"

"A virus that forms blisters. Are you saying she's a blister? I'm not understanding your metaphor, querida."

"I'm saying she's a loathsome and recurring problem. She just showed up here," I said.

"Oh," Jesse said, realization dawning on him. "That makes sense then. Except, it doesn't make any sense whatsoever because I just exorcised her. How could she have been there with you?"

"I don't know," I said. "Maybe…"

And the realization of what Alexa must have been hit me suddenly.

"Oh God," I said. "She's-."

" _Back_ ," Alexa hissed as she materialized suddenly.

One of the knives on the floor that I'd just dropped went whizzing past my shoulder. Unlike the knives she'd pinned around Jesse the other day, this knife actually hit me. It took off the fabric from my t-shirt and scraped along my skin briefly until my shoulder was wet with blood.

"She's what?" Jesse asked, and when I didn't answer, I could hear his tone start to grow worried. "Susannah, is she there now? Susannah?"

I wanted to answer him, but I couldn't. In my preoccupation with not being stabbed, I'd dropped the phone. Even though it wasn't on speaker, I could still hear the plethora of Spanish swear words Jesse was saying from the phone's position on the floor.

"You made a good point earlier," Alexa said, and the knives that I'd dropped to the floor earlier were inches away from me now and steadily gaining more ground. "I shouldn't kill you."

I didn't speak. I barely even breathed. The knives were so close to me, and every last one of them was under Alexa's control. With the knife that nicked my shoulder unaccounted for, there was still one knife in front of my chest, another in front of my face, and one had circled around me to aim at my back.

Alexa spoke again in a very casual, almost friendly voice, and said, "I'm just going to maim you. I'll leave you alive enough to not become a ghost, but not alive enough to pose a threat to me. Plus, your husband's still on the line, so he'll get to hear the whole thing as a warning."

Without a single one of the knives receding, Alexa stooped, picked up my phone, and pressed the speaker button. "That sounds like a fair deal, right?" she said.

"You're sick," I said quietly.

"I _was_ sick," Alexa corrected. "I consider myself cancer-free now."

The knife in front of my face began to inch closer and closer, and I squirmed. She was trying to gouge out one of my eyes. There was no way I was going to get out of this without getting a little banged up, as the blood on my shoulder already indicated, so I might as well have gone down fighting. There was no sense in just sitting here and letting her stab me at her own discretion, of course.

I jerked myself upwards suddenly, and I felt one of the knives make light contact with the bridge of my nose. I moved it to grab it by the blade, barehanded, and I gripped it tightly. Alexa was still controlling it, even as my palms felt warmer and wetter with my own blood. And I only had one knife in hand; there were still three more of them. I didn't have enough hands to be able to stave them all off.

I felt the knife at my back press into me insistently, and my skin felt cool once it had created a rip in my t-shirt, and I could feel the metal directly against me. I moved sideways only to have that knife rip a longer hole into my shirt that eventually cut into my skin.

There was something about the thinness of the cut that, unlike my bleeding hands or shoulder, made me cry out in pain.

And then I heard Jesse's voice again.

"Alexa," he said darkly, and then he called her a name in English that quite possibly would've earned him the biggest single contribution the swear jar had ever seen, "If you hurt her, Hell would pale in comparison to what I'll do to you."

Alexa laughed cruelly and was about to say something to me when, suddenly, one of the knives that was pointed at me was pointed at her.

She looked down in confusion, as did I. My hand wasn't on the handle, and the only person in the room with telekinesis was her. But before either of us knew it, all of the knives, except for the one I was gripping blade first, were turned on Alexa.

And then all of the knives were plunging into her body.

Both the knives and my phone clattered to the floor a few moments later as she dematerialized. I grabbed them quickly, even though my palms ached. Each of the four knives was covered in blood, but, as time passed, the blood on one of the knives began to fade into nothingness.

I held on to all of the knives tightly, by the handles instead of by the blades this time. I had no way of knowing if she was gone or not. I reached down again, still holding all of the knives, to pick up my phone.

"I'm OK," I said.

I could hear both the relief and worry in his voice as he responded, but I wasn't listening to anything he said.

"Suze?" a voice in the direction of the window seat said.

I turned to the source of the voice as I gripped the knives more tightly. I nearly dropped them when I saw who it was.

"We'll talk when you get home, Jesse," I said tonelessly, and I cut him off abruptly as I looked at my latest spectral visitor.

"Elena," I said quickly. "Did you use those knives on that ghost that was just here?"

Elena nodded and said, "I was coming by to ask if you'd had any luck with telling the police about my body yet, and I noticed you were in trouble. Are you OK?"

"I'm fine now," I said. "Thanks, by the way. I didn't know how I was going to get out of that one. And I was planning on calling today. Sorry, I've been pretty busy."

"It's alright. I see why you've been so busy lately. Are most of the people you work with as difficult as her?"

"Not typically," I said.

Elena looked like she was about to say something else, but she dematerialized as someone else appeared in the doorway. This time, it wasn't Alexa.

Jesse was home.


	13. Chapter 13

**Hush**

Thirteen

Jesse crossed the room in about two steps and embraced me tightly. I felt deja vu tug at the back of my mind, but it took me a few moments to realize what memory triggered it. This, Jesse holding me because he was scared he might've lost me, reminded me of when he'd caught me in David's old room seeking sanctuary from a potential attack from Maria.

I couldn't help but melt into him. I felt tired, to say the least. Every bit of adrenaline that had been coursing through my body to help me fend off Alexa had dissipated, and all I could remember was the fact that I'd woken up before dawn, and some of my body parts were bleeding.

Jesse realized this a few moments later when he pulled away.

"You're hurt," he said softly, surveying the damage that Alexa had done. "Wait here."

I didn't know what else to do besides wait. The idea of moving, getting dressed for working or eating breakfast or anything else, did not sound appealing. Jesse returned a few seconds later from the bathroom, first aid kit in hand.

I winced as he cleaned the small cut on the bridge of my nose with peroxide and then Neosporin. He thumbed through the kit briefly before he selected the smallest strip sized Band Aid possible and pressed it to my nose.

"I'm going to look stupid," I lamented.

"You'll look worse if it gets infected," Jesse said briefly before he began to tend to my shoulder. He lifted the t-shirt I'd been wearing over my head swiftly, and I shivered as goosebumps began to form on my skin.

I traded shivering for wincing again as Jesse began to clean the cut on my shoulder. He handed me my shirt after he'd applied another Band Aid to it.

"She got my back, too," I said, and instead of putting my shirt back on, I twisted around so that he could see the slender cut that ran between my shoulder blades.

I couldn't see Jesse's face, but I heard him swear. His words were in Spanish at least, which meant things weren't quite as dire as him swearing in English.

"What? Am I going to be disfigured or something?" I asked. I tried to whip around to face him, but Jesse had a steadying hand on my shoulder.

"It's not that. You'll be fine," he said after a few moments.

The sensation of the peroxide going along the cut on my back produced a hissing sound from me. Jesse's hands continued steadily until I heard the sound of scissors snipping briefly before there were bandages, several of them, laid out across the skin of my back.

I put my shirt back on and turned around to face him afterwards.

Jesse's eyes fluttered between mine and my abdomen. "I'll kill her," he said flatly.

I sighed. "She's already dead. I stabbed her twice, and she did all of this after that happened."

"I'll find a way," he vowed.

"I don't even think she can be exorcised," I said. "Jesse, I don't think she's your everyday ghost. I think she's a shifter."

"A shifter?"

I nodded and said, "A mediator with the ability to time travel and perform exorcisms with just a bit of visualizing. Like me."

Jesse ran a hand through his hair and swore in Spanish.

"That complicates things," he admitted.

He wasn't wrong. Being a shifter explained how Alexa had gotten out of Shadowland so fast after Jesse had exorcised her. It probably also explained what had happened to the ghost of Francesca Powell. Grabbing hold of someone and thinking of fog and doors was much easier than gathering up chicken blood or holy water.

There was a long moment of silence where neither of us wanted to admit the frightening truth that had settled between us.

We didn't know what to do.

Finally, Jesse said, "You should get dressed."

"Why?" I asked. "I'm not exactly at my best right now. I'll have to check with Felipa first, but I don't think I have any appointments until at least eleven. I'm going to try and get some sleep until then."

"You can rest in your office. I'm fairly sure that," and here he broke off to call Alexa a word in Spanish that I hadn't learned yet but sounded incredibly juicy, "will come back to finish her work as soon as she's able to.

"She could pop up at the clinic," I said.

"I'll be at the clinic," Jesse said. "And she won't ever want to see me again."

A few hours later, I wasn't sure if it was the threat of Jesse or Alexa's need to recuperate that was keeping her away from our workplace. With my head on my desk and a small puddle of drool forming beneath me, I wasn't sure about much of anything other than how good sleeping in with warm rays of sun shining on my back through the window felt.

I jumped awake with a start when I heard a loud knock on my office door. I quickly wiped the incriminating drool off my face as I crossed the room to open the door.

"Brett," I said in surprise.

Dr. Brett Whitehall, who looked like a highly intelligent surfer in his lab coat, gave me a terse smile.

"There's a patient of mine who it turns out is a patient of yours," Brett said. "Daniel Powell. He came in this morning with some suspicious injuries, and he won't say how he got them. He won't say anything, for that matter. He's come in the same way before, and at this point, I'm concerned that there may be some sort of abuse in his household. Could you corroborate anything like that?"

"Abuse in his household," I said slowly. "There aren't any indications of anything like that in my sessions with him. Is he still here by any chance? I could talk to him again."

It was Tuesday, and I didn't have another appointment scheduled with Daniel until tomorrow afternoon. But I was starting to have a bad feeling about why he was showing up again with suspicious injuries.

"He is," Brett confirmed. "I'll send him here."

Daniel arrived and was seated in my office in no more than three minutes. He looked at me so blankly I felt like he was looking through me.

"What happened, Daniel?" I asked. "I mean, what really happened?"

Daniel looked away at that point. He even shifted around slightly so that he could see out of the large window next to my desk.

"You know you can talk to me. I heard you do it yesterday," I insisted, a little more impatient than I should have. My counselor voice was slipping into my mediator voice.

Daniel remained quiet for several more moments, and I sighed. Our progress had been more hollow the I'd thought. And since I was having an impromptu meeting with Daniel and not a real session, there was hardly any time to try and coax answers out of him with artwork.

"You said nothing was going to happen to me."

Daniel's words were soft but might as well have been a knife plunging into me. I didn't know what to say to him. "Things were more complicated than I thought, and I'm sorry you got hurt. Also, you may get hurt again because I have no idea how to fix anything." That wouldn't have sounded comforting.

"I'm sorry. Handling the ghost isn't going as smoothly as it usually does. And she's been snooping," I said. I thought back to how she knew mine and Jesse's names and where we lived.

Daniel didn't say anything else, but his feelings might as well have been waving in the air like a banner. Sorry didn't fix anything.

"I'm going to take care of everything," I said.

I was surprised to hear Daniel's voice again.

"She said don't," he said. And his voice was both quiet and biting.

After Daniel left my office, I spoke to Brett again. I described him as "accident prone," a catch all term I'd used over the years to mean "prone to physical altercations with a ghost." I hated that I had to use it for Daniel though. Eight was younger than I'd been the first time I'd had a ghost get violent with me.

And eight was definitely too young for anyone to have to go through having their life being used as leverage to make someone else fall in line with a ghost's wishes. Because that was what Alexa was doing now.

She wasn't hiding away and building up strength. She'd just been changing up her strategy. Alexa knew we wouldn't dare to come after her again if Daniel's life was on the line. It was one thing to endanger ourselves, but putting children in the way of harm was out of the question. Even Jesse, who had been more pissed than I'd ever seen him, would stand down for Daniel's sake.

The uncertainty over what we should do next became an impasse. It was too dangerous to do anything, and, even if it wasn't, there was nothing I could think of that we could do.

Except, maybe there was one thing that I could do.

A light bulb flickered on in my mind as an idea that I knew was horrible, even though I wouldn't know exactly how horrible until much later, crashed into me.

I had picked up my cell phone and pressed the call button on El Diablo before I could take the time to rethink what I was about to do. My dedication to the task at hand, namely talking to Paul out of my own volition for the third time in less than ten days, dwindled with every subsequent unanswered ring. Eventually, I reached, not Paul himself, but his voicemail.

I didn't want to leave a message, but I did anyway.

"I have a favor to ask. Name your price."

The call back came within twenty minutes.

Paul didn't miss a beat.

"Sacrifice your firstborn child to me," he said.

"You sure you really want four kids?" I asked, placing a lot of emphasis on the word "four."

Paul paused and then said, in a tone more serious than I'd heard him use in years, "I don't. That's my price."

"Wait. You really want to be Rumpelstiltskin?"

"No. I meant I don't want any kids. If I do whatever it is that you're asking for then you can't hold any sort of potential paternity results over my head."

Potential results? I had the actual papers, complete with 99.9% match, squirreled away at home. I wanted him to ask for something else.

"Are you sure that's what you want?" I asked.

"No. What I want from you is a signed non disclosure agreement regarding anything related to me and any paternity matches you may find or have found. Your word's not going to cut it. I remember what happened last time we made a promise, you see."

I remembered, too. It was hard to forget the night I'd taken him along to a mediating case turned suicide, drugged him, and watched my then-fiancé slug him in the face and subsequently get hauled off to jail.

Paul continued, "If you decide to tell anyone, especially Debbie, I'll be perfectly within my rights to take you to court for everything you own. Your little clinic, your house… It might not get torn down, but believe me when I say you'll never see the inside of it again, considering the ensuing bankruptcy. But I'm sure that won't ever happen because I'm being fair. After all, this'll make us even. Neither of us will have anything to hold over the other. That sounds fair to you, right?"

The idea of giving up my one piece of leverage over Paul was daunting. The house was registered with the Carmel Historical Society, so I knew I had Jesse's soul, but when might something else come up? I hadn't been thinking that there was a dark monster lurking in Jesse or anything until Paul had put the possibility out in the open. What else might be hiding in one of Dr. Slaski's books that Paul was just waiting to tell me about later? And what would he want then?

"Deal," I said quickly, before I could change my mind. "So long as you're up for what I have in mind."

And then I explained Alexa, and how Paul, a shifter who wasn't pregnant, would be well suited to helping out. Namely how Paul would be able to follow Alexa up to Shadowland and shove her through one of those doors that no one came back from.

"Sounds easy," Paul said. "I'll be in town on business this Friday. We can meet up then at my place."

"Your place? Your hotel room?" I asked.

Paul laughed. "You want to do an exorcism in a hotel room? I mean, sure, you could. But I still own Pops' old place. I just don't stay there when I'm in Carmel because there's no wait staff and the fridge is empty. It'll be perfect for what we're going to be doing."

"Exorcising a ghost," I said in clarification. Because if this was anything like those shifter lessons Paul had forced on me back in high school, then ideas were probably swirling around in his head about what other things he planned on doing with me.

Paul paused for a second. "Depends on what else you might want to do. You're not showing or anything yet, are you?" he asked.

I resisted the urge to unleash a torrent of swear words and hang up the phone.

"Friday, you give me a time, and we'll meet at your place," I said.

"Deal."


	14. Chapter 14

**Hush**

Fourteen

 **Note:** I have some time off, so I'm challenging myself to finish writing this story this week and get it all uploaded by next week. Bear with me. Also, I've just finished fifteen, and I can say now that this story wil more than likely have eighteen chapters.

"I came up with a way to solve our ghost-shifter problem," I announced just about the second Jesse came into my office for lunch.

"I'm listening."

I hesitated for a few more moments while Jesse gave me an imploring look.

"Whatever it is, you can tell me, querida."

He made it a point to call me "querida" whenever he wanted me to do something because he knew it still made my heart do these funny palpitations, even after all these years. It was basically his way of playing dirty to match my own use of feminine wiles or whatever. It just about always worked, and now was no exception.

"I'm meeting up with Paul on Friday to take care of it. He's going to take her to Shadowland and shove her through one of those doors for us."

To his credit, Jesse didn't fly off the handle immediately like I expected him to. Instead he said, in a much too casual voice, "Have you agreed to sell your body again?"

"Oh my God, Jesse, that was one time," I said. "And I didn't plan on going through with it. You know that."

"Well, what did you agree to give to him?" Jesse asked. "Because knowing Slater, he doesn't do anything for free."

"You're right. I told him I'd forget all about knowing he was the triplet's biological father. And that he could get a statement from me in writing that I didn't plan on telling anyone, lest I face financial consequence or something."

Jesse ran a hand through his hair. "That's…"

"A tough deal, I know. But it's not me pretending I'm going to sleep with him, so I think it's a win, considering the situation."

There was a brief pause before Jesse insisted, "I'm going with you."

"The deal has nothing to do with sex or anything," I said. "Didn't you hear what I just said?"

"I don't care what he agreed to. That," and then he said something particularly nasty in Spanish that I could only halfway understand, "isn't someone we can trust."

Almost instantly memories of my blistered feet pounding a steaming pavement as I retreated from Paul's house and his shifter lessons came back to me. "I know, I know," I said. "But if you lose your temper, which you always do when you're around him, there's nothing keeping you from an assault charge this time."

"I can behave myself."

I gave him a dubious look. "And I can defend myself. If it comes to that. And I bet Paul would be too proud to admit he got hit by a girl in court anyway, so…."

"So I'll still come with you, and I'll keep my hands to myself."

I already knew Jesse wasn't budging, and there was no way he wasn't going to be watching me like a hawk two days from now to make sure I didn't take off for Paul's alone.

Just great. I was going to be raising my kid as a single mother whose husband was away on a prison stint. I was betting that men's prison was nowhere near as nice as the set up on _Orange Is the New Black_.

Without another word about Paul, Jesse offered me a sandwich and took a bite of his own. I looked at the sandwich for a couple of seconds in a mix of disinterest, nausea, and drowsiness before Jesse noticed I wasn't eating.

"Something wrong?" he asked. "Nothing from this morning is hurting you, is it?"

"I'm fine," I said. "Daniel, on the other hand…"

And then I gave him a brief rundown of this morning which made him put his sandwich down as well.

"That," and Jesse broke off to say the same word he'd called her this morning.

"I know," I said. And then I tried briefly to imitate his Spanish.

Jesse looked me as blankly as if I'd started spouting off Greek, until one of the corners of his mouth twitched, and he started to chuckle. "That's not even close to what I said," he laughed.

"Then what does it mean? It sounds juicy, and I want to use it."

"It doesn't have a translation in English, that word. And besides, your Spanish when you swear is even worse. Which is strange, considering how bad your Spanish already is and how often you swear in English."

"More like it's strange considering how often I hear you swear in Spanish," I said.

Jesse gave me his best attempt at an entirely innocent smile before he returned to his sandwich. Eventually, he said, "You really should eat, Susannah. You're not the only one in your body who needs food anymore, remember?"

I wasn't entirely sure as to why, but somehow that made me want to eat less.

"Have you scheduled another doctor's appointment?"

I shook my head. "I'm not even sure what doctor I want to use."

Jesse grinned and said, "Don't worry. There's still plenty of time to think about it."

I did not return his grin. Thanks to Alexa, I hadn't spent much time thinking about much of anything aside from homicidal ghosts lately. I hadn't planned on giving my impending motherhood any thought, besides the prenatal pills I'd shambled into my routine in place of birth control, until everything had been handled on the mediation front.

But now I was thinking about it.

I took a bite of my sandwich, chewed slowly, swallowed, and then said, "Do you think the baby will be a mediator?"

Jesse looked slightly caught off guard by my question, but it didn't take him more than a couple of seconds of thought before he said, "There's a good chance-considering who we are and the likelihood that there's some sort of mediator gene, even if it is recessive. Are you worried a ghost will try and intimidate it, like Daniel?"

"That's not it. Well, maybe that is part of it, now that you mention it. But just think about all of the crap we go through as mediators in general. Think about all of the broken bones."

"I've never had a ghost break any of my bones."

"Jesse, you've literally been murdered before. Don't change the subject."

Jesse gave me a very ruffled look, like I had insulted his manhood by reminding him that he was a homicide victim, before saying, "And what exactly is the subject? We'd obviously take care of any ghosts that were troubling it. And, once it got a bit older, we'd teach it the same way you're teaching the triplets now."

"Teach it to be able to defend itself from all the ghosts that are going to try and kill it at some point in time? Because that's what the lessons I'm giving to the triplets are inevitably going to turn into in a few years."

Jesse sighed, leaned back in his chair, and said, "I wanted to know if you'd thought of an obstetrician, and now you're asking me to think about how our child, who is still a fetus, by the way, will cope with the undead a decade from now?"

"Yes," I said stubbornly.

"You worry too much, Susannah."

"Maybe you're not worried enough about our fetus-child, our fetus-child who will already know what every single swear word in English and Spanish sounds like before it's even emerged from the womb. Fetus-children can hear stuff, music and voices, you know. And mediator fetus-children can probably even hear ghosts."

Jesse was doing his best to look like he was taking me seriously, but he was biting his lip to keep from laughing.

"I'm being serious!" I said, and I swatted his arm with part of the wrapping from my sandwich.

"I know you are," he said, and he couldn't help but let out a small laugh. "But everything is going to be fine. The baby will be fine. And we are going to do a fine job of raising it."

I wasn't entirely convinced, but instead of arguing I took a begrudging bite of my sandwich.

Once Jesse had left my office and lunch had drawn to a close, I picked up my phone and did a quick search for the Monterey Police Department's non-emergency phone number. I masked my phone number, like I'd done when I'd called Patrick, and copied their number into the dialer.

It would've been nice if the triplets could have been here for the conclusion of the How to Mediate a Car Crash Victim series, but all of the help Elena had given me this morning made her more than deserving of being moved to the very top of my priority list. Besides, my to-do list at the moment was briefly empty, seeing as there wasn't anything to do with Alexa until I met with Paul on Friday.

My conversation with the officer who answered the phone was brief, and she sounded fairly disinterested. There wasn't much about the story of seeing an abandoned car on the side of the road that instantly led anyone to believe that death was involved. The officer offered to send someone out to check out the situation-though she didn't give a time range for when this would happen. There wasn't any pressing that I could do, and there wasn't any pressing that really needed to be done. All of the pieces were in place, thanks to Elena, and it was only a matter of time until her loved ones found out that she was gone.

"Only a matter of time" turned out to be even shorter than I thought it would be.

Elena appeared in front of me just as Jesse was locking the front door to the clinic behind us. I could tell the exact moment that he turned around and saw her. His hand went to my shoulder immediately, and I could feel his body beside mine.

"She's not dangerous," I said quickly. "This is the ghost we've been helping who was in the car crash."

The tension I felt at my side dissipated as I turned back to Elena.

"Is everything alright? I called the police department, so it shouldn't be too long before they send someone out to investigate."

"They already have," Elena said. "And they've already identified me and called my dad."

"Do you think that's not why you're here then?" I asked. If it wasn't, then the open-and-shut case that Elena was supposed to be was going to get a lot more complicated.

"I think it was," Elena said quickly, "I'm just not entirely sure it is anymore."

I closed my eyes briefly and prayed to whatever benevolent being that there might've been out there that she wasn't going to say she wanted to come back to life. Ghosts that get coming back to life stuck in their heads are the most stubborn variety of ghost possible. Elena didn't seem like that type though. If I had to judge her, she'd definitely be the type to think that moving on meant reincarnation or something else spiritually profound.

"What do you think is keeping you here then?" Jesse asked during my silence.

Elena bit her lip and looked between me and Jesse before saying, "Are you sure you're going to be OK, Suze?"

"Me?" I asked. "I'll be fine. Why wouldn't I be fine?"

The second I said it the events of the morning came slamming back into my mind like a freight train. And then, after I remembered the feeling of all those knives on my skin and seeing them plunge into Alexa's body with the help of Elena's spectral powers, I felt embarrassed.

The only ghost who had ever seen me vulnerable or saved my life before was Jesse. And Jesse wasn't a ghost anymore-never mind the fact that Jesse had always been more than just a ghost to me. The typical rules of interaction with ghosts, like not trusting them or not making out with them, had never applied to him. But here I was anyway, getting bailed out of danger by a modern day hippie like a damsel in distress. Somehow, even including the danger I'd been in this morning, the feeling that this knowledge produced in me was the lowlight of my day.

The feeling got worse a few seconds later when Elena recounted her rescue of me earlier, as though I hadn't been there.

"So I just wanted to know that you'd be OK dealing with her," Elena concluded.

Before I could speak, Jesse said, "She's got me. She'll be fine."

Elena looked at Jesse briefly, first discerningly, as though she was trying to size him up to see if he was capable of taking on Alexa, and then more discerningly, as though she was trying to figure out whether she wanted to rank him as 9.5 or as a 10 on a scale of good looks.

I tolerated the second look only because the answer was 11, and Elena was dead and probably deserved one last chance to check out a guy before she moved on for good.

"I really will be," I said after a few seconds. "Thank you for being concerned, but I can handle myself. All you need to worry about is taking care of yourself, you know, moving on."

Elena stopped looking at Jesse and started looking at me again. I made my gaze as confident as possible, and she seemed to accept that Jesse and I were right. We could handle this.

"Thank you for all your help," were Elena's final words before she dematerialized for the last time.

If I'd known that Elena had been right to worry, I probably would've asked her to stick around for a little while longer. But since I didn't know that, I got into the passenger side of the BMW, and Jesse and I went home.


	15. Chapter 15

**Hush**

Fifteen

 **Note:** Chapter sixteen is done and will be up by Friday. Seventeen is basically done and will be up by Tuesday. Hopefully, eighteen will be finished by next Friday.

Friday came sooner than I would've liked it to. My readiness to rid of the world of Alexa didn't quite outweigh my dislike of the idea of seeing Paul. It definitely didn't outweigh how worried I was that Jesse was going to wind up in jail again. How well would the legality of his identity hold up under scrutiny from a court? Sure, Father Dom had done a good enough job at procuring Jesse's identity that he'd been able to go through school and the loan process without incident, but I was always wary that we'd find the end of our rope someday.

"Ready?" Jesse asked as we pulled out of the clinic's parking lot.

"I'm ready," I said. "The question is are you ready? Ready to deal with Paul in the responsible grown up way?"

"I'll be on my best behavior," Jesse said, much too sweetly.

I didn't believe a word he said, but I didn't press the matter any further. Instead, I said, "Here's the plan. Get in. Call Alexa. Paul pushes her through one of those doors up there. We leave."

"As if I would want to spend a second longer than I have to around Paul Slater," Jesse said.

"Then we'll need to think about Patrick," I continued. "How long do you think it's going to take before he realizes Alexa's gone? And do you think he's the type to do anything rash afterwards?"

"Knowing what we know about that," Jesse broke off here to call her the same swear word he always called Alexa in place of her name, "she was the one leading their efforts. Without her, I doubt Patrick would be much of a threat."

"We have to find a way to pin the heists on him though-in case he decides to flee from us or something."

"One thing at a time, querida," Jesse said as we got on to 17-Mile Drive.

Traffic was terrible, as per usual on Friday evenings, but I closed my eyes to the warmth of the sunshine streaming in through the window.

"When do you want to tell your parents about the baby?" Jesse asked.

I nearly reminded him that he'd only known about the baby for a few days now, but I didn't. "How about we let them figure it out on their own? When I start showing or something?" I said.

"Susannah…"

I sighed. "Whenever they come up from L.A. next, I guess. Why's it matter?"

"Why don't you want to tell anyone?" Jesse countered.

"The more people who know the more real everything is," I admitted, and I slumped down in my seat slightly.

Jesse merged lanes, more smoothly than I could have done, and said, "Are you still thinking about the child being a mediator?"

"It's not that."

"Then what is it?" Jesse asked, and he took his eyes off of the road for a couple of seconds to look at me.

"It's everything," I said, avoiding his gaze. "Our lives are really going to change."

"You're not wrong," Jesse said. "But our lives are always changing. Did you see us here ten years ago? Married to… What was it you called me? Ghost breath?"

"Cadaver breath," I corrected. "But also, cowboy. You didn't like that one much either."

"I still don't-because my family was made up of hard working ranchers, not vaqueros."

"I know, cowboy."

Jesse groaned.

"We don't have to tell anyone until you're ready, Susannah," he conceded a few moments later.

We passed the rest of the drive without talking about the baby, and I tried my best to make my thoughts follow suit. It was another fifteen minutes before we pulled into Paul's driveway. Paul's car, a ridiculously expensive looking sports car that may or may not have been a Lamborghini, sat in the driveway.

I hopped out of the door the second Jesse put the car in park. I headed to the front door quickly though he was at my heels before I knew it.

"Just let me do the talking," I said.

Jesse rolled his eyes and gave no indication that he planned on taking my advice.

"I never called him back to tell him you were coming," I said. "He might not let me in if he sees you."

"I'm going to be there with you, so he'll see me eventually. Better sooner than later."

I was not entirely convinced of this logic as I rang the doorbell. After a few seconds without recognition from the other end, I started to wonder if Jesse was wrong, like I feared. But Paul opened the door soon enough, wearing a button down with the sleeves rolled up and a couple of the top buttons undone, a glass of champagne in one hand, and an annoyed look on his face.

It was always frustrating that despite how horrible of a person Paul could be, I'd never once seen him look anything less than incredibly handsome. He was no match for Jesse, of course, but I could grudgingly understand why he was engaged to a Hollywood starlet-obvious monetary reasons aside.

"Of course you brought him. The two of you don't go anywhere without each other, do you?" Paul said.

"Till death do us part," I said.

Paul looked over my shoulder, at Jesse, and seemed less than impressed by this statement. He was probably considering the fact that Jesse had already been dead before. He took a step back anyway, opened the door to his house a bit wider, and gestured with a tilt of his head for the two of us to enter.

The interior looked more or less like I'd last seen it all those years ago. It was still modern and minimalist, and light from the evening sun entered through the large glass windows the house seemed to be made entirely out of. The only difference was that there was a distinct feeling that this house was no longer lived in. There was no dust anywhere, but there was also no Dr. Slaski or Mark, his nurse.

Paul's voice shook me out of my own thoughts.

"You didn't think it was risky to bring de Silva along for the ride?" he asked.

"Why wouldn't I bring him?" I countered.

The answer to my question was pretty obvious. Paul knew, as well as I did and as well as Jesse did, that every second Jesse spent in his presence, the likelihood of someone, namely Jesse, being arrested increased exponentially.

"You're playing with fire, Slater," Jesse said. "If you give me any reason to touch you, I guarantee I'll be on trial for murder, not assault."

"Was that a threat?"

"No. Just a fact."

"A fact that won't matter," I implored, "because no one is getting hurt except for the ghost. Our child is going to have a father who's not doing twenty-five to life in the California penal system."

The last part was very much so aimed at Jesse, who did not have the courtesy to look even so much as a tiny bit sheepish. I was willing to bet almost anything that if Jesse had known Paul for more than thirty minutes back in 1850, he'd have killed him in a duel or something.

Paul drained the rest of his glass and headed off towards the kitchen, leaving both Jesse and I alone in the living room.

"Champagne, Suze?" Paul called.

"Still pregnant," I responded.

"So only a little then?"

Paul, who was still in the kitchen, missed the supremely annoyed look I was giving him. What he did not miss was Jesse calling out to him, not for champagne, but to remind him that there was still a ghost to take care of.

"I'd like this ghost to be gone before nightfall," Jesse said, and all of the annoyance in my face was present in his tone.

Why didn't we know any shifters other than Paul? This would've been so much easier if Father Dom was one, although he probably wouldn't have been up to shoving Alexa through one of those doors.

"First things first," Paul said as he emerged from the kitchen with both a glass brimming with champagne and a half empty champagne bottle, "the both of you have some paperwork to sign."

He set both the glass and the bottle down on a nearby table and exchanged them for a few pieces of paperwork. I could read "Non Disclosure Agreement" written clearly across the top of one. He handed me the papers and a pen.

"Sign wherever you see a red 'X,' and then pass it to de Silva. If you decide to tell anyone anything of note, I'll be seeing the both of you in court."

I skimmed the contract to make sure there wasn't anything lurid in it, and then I signed my name, my new name, Susannah de Silva. I handed the papers to Jesse next who did not seem quite as content with skimming as I did.

After a few moments had passed where Jesse was continuing to read the contract, Paul said, "You can sign it or not sign it. But only one of those options involves me helping you with your ghost problem."

Jesse scowled, signed the papers, and thrust it back in Paul's direction.

Paul thumbed through the pages and nodded after seeing that everything was in order.

"Let's get started then," he said. "Suze just has to summon up your ghost first."

"I'll get on that then," I said.

And I closed my eyes and thought about her. I scrutinized every aspect of her appearance, from her thin figure to her wavy hair. I even thought about the sinews of her neck and how they felt beneath my fingers while I had attempted to choke any remaining life out of her the other day. That is to say, I thought about everything in my mind that came up as Alexa related.

I opened my eyes and looked around, fully expecting to see her standing somewhere nearby.

"Alexa?" I called. There was no response, so I followed it up with a lie and said, "We just want to chat."

Silence followed again.

"There's no one here, Suze," Paul said.

"She could be lurking," I said. "She does that."

Jesse looked around the room, scrutinizing every corner with his eyes, but his search turned up as empty as mine did.

Then Jesse said, "She used to be a mediator. If she can pull herself out of purgatory, then it could also be possible that she doesn't have to come when you call, Susannah."

"I hate to say it, but I agree with de Silva," Paul said. "I'm surprised she showed up the other day when you tried to exorcise her."

I groaned and said, "Shit. If she knows I'm calling her and is just choosing not to come then that means she knows we're still looking for her. Which means Daniel's in trouble."

Jesse swore in Spanish and turned towards Paul.

"Do you know any way to force a ghost to come when you call them, Slater?" Jesse asked. His voice was rough and immediate. Time was of the essence, as it often was in the life of a mediator.

Paul looked slightly taken aback from Jesse's tone, that or maybe he was starting to get tipsy from all the champagne he had imbibed. "Maybe. But wanting ghosts around isn't typically my top concern," he said.

"Then make it your top concern," Jesse said, and he began to advance on Paul in a show of physical intimidation.

"Jesse, stop," I said.

But Jesse did not stop. Instead, he grabbed a hold of the collar of Paul's shirt, pulled him to him roughly, and said, without taking his eyes off of Paul, "A little boy's life is in danger. If you know anything, then-."

"It doesn't matter what he knows," I said quickly, before Jesse could start throwing punches. "I've got an idea."

Jesse grip on Paul's shirt loosened, but his eyes were still fixed directly on him.

"The whole reason Alexa showed up to our house in the first place was because we were talking to Patrick. So I'm sure she'll show up again if we decide to visit him."

"Sounds like a plan," Paul said, and he began to cautiously ease himself out of Jesse's grasp.

Jesse let him go and took a step back from him. He was still glaring at Paul, like he might decide to throttle him at any second for even the slightest infraction.

I pulled out my phone and started googling Patrick's name. I had his work address, but I doubted he'd be there on a Friday night, even considering how socially awkward he was. Besides, an industrial park was no place for a potentially violent exorcism.

Finding Patrick's home address was hardly challenging. The nice thing about living in the Information Age was that, if you had the willpower and just enough money, you could find out damn near anything you wanted. It didn't take much effort to find one of those stalker websites, the kind that let you screen employees and dates at your leisure, and search for Patrick's name. After all, I already had one of those websites bookmarked. Websites like these, the kind that give you access to information that would make the average person a bit uncomfortable, were an incredibly handy addition to the mediator toolkit. It was no more than a few clicks later that I had a home address for Patrick.

"Who's up for a field trip to Monterey" I asked. "Don't bother answering. You both are."

Paul stepped away from Jesse and closer towards me-and by extension, the door.

"Let's hit the road while the night's still young then," Paul said. He downed what was left of the champagne in his glass and picked up the champagne bottle from the table before opening the front door.

Jesse followed behind Paul quickly, like he was trying to make sure that Paul didn't make a run for it or something.

I left the house after Jesse at a much more normal pace and muttered, "Best behavior, my ass."


	16. Chapter 16

**Hush**

Sixteen

 **Warning:** Really messed up comment regarding abortion.

It turned out that Jesse high tailing it after Paul had less to do with him being worried that Paul wouldn't fulfill his end of the deal and more to do with being worried that Paul would try and get behind the wheel after how much he'd been drinking. It was a smart call on Jesse's part. Paul had insisted that he wasn't drunk, but our plans didn't include letting him get arrested or accidentally murder innocent people while under the influence.

Unfortunately, neither Jesse's BMW nor Paul's Lamborghini had a backseat. So one of us was tasked with driving Paul, and the other would have to drive alone. And, as luck would have it, "one of us" meant me. Paul had outright refused to let Jesse drive his car. I wasn't sure if he would've changed his mind if he knew that Jesse was a better driver than I was or if his decision was rooted in general discomfort at having Jesse take control of one of his possessions.

Regardless of his reasoning, I gave Jesse Patrick's address, and we both drove off, with me taking the lead.

There was silence in the car between myself and Paul for a few moments as we drove along 17-Mile Drive. I surprised myself by being the first one to break it.

"You know shifting isn't the only way to gork your brain, right?" I asked as I nodded towards the bottle of champagne he was nursing.

"You caring about me, Suze?" Paul asked.

"More like I'm taking pity on your liver."

Paul shrugged. "It's a work hard, play hard lifestyle. Gotta have a hobby between all the investor meetings."

"Golf just doesn't cut it anymore? Or what about your fiance?"

"What about my fiance?" He asked, looking at me curiously. "That's the second time you've mentioned her to me. You really are jealous, aren't you? Worried that I won't be around to save you from de Silva when it all goes to shit, huh?"

"I'm not jealous, and I'm not worried," I said, as emphatically as I could. "I'm just wondering isn't there more to life for you now-than drinking and whatever the hell else it is you put in your body?"

I could feel Paul staring at me even as I kept my eyes on the road.

His voice when he spoke next was cold. "You might be a counselor now, Suze, but don't try and psychoanalyze me," he said.

Those were the last words we exchanged for the duration of the drive. The rest of the nearly half hour long ride to Patrick's was silent and punctuated only by the occasional sound of Paul raising the champagne bottle to his lips.

In the end, Patrick's address led us to a small looking house in a neighborhood full of similarly small houses. One of his next door neighbors was having a raucous party, and cars had spilled over all along the street and into parts of Patrick's lawn. There was only one car in the driveway though, and, presumably, it belonged to Patrick.

There was just enough space for both Paul and Jesse's car to pull into the driveway behind it. Both the Lamborghini and the BMW looked out of place in the neighborhood though. I hoped anyone milling about from the party next door would be too drunk to notice how conspicuous our presence was.

Paul put a stopper in his bottle of champagne and set it down on the floor of the passenger side. "This it?" he asked.

"I think so. But he's not going to want to see me or Jesse. You'll have to go up there and, I don't know, ask if you can use his driveway. Then we'll be in right behind you."

"I remember saying I'd help with your ghost, not spearhead an entire investigation."

"I swear to God, Paul, I will let Jesse murder you. Just do this, would you?" I said as I unbuckled my seatbelt.

"If anyone gets shot this time-," Paul said as he opened his door.

"I didn't even bring the shotgun with me. Calm down."

We both exited the car a few seconds later, and I headed back towards Jesse to inform him of our latest plan. Unlike earlier at Paul's, Jesse agreed that it was probably best that we held off on showing our faces for a little while. Jesse and I trailed behind Paul and did our best to stay out of view of the front windows of Patrick's house.

Paul rang the doorbell, and we all waited for Patrick to come to the door. For a second, I was worried that he couldn't hear his own doorbell over the sound of the party raging next door, but my worries were for naught.

I couldn't see Patrick's face from where I was standing, but I could hear him ask, "Can I help you with something?"

"I was actually wondering if I could park in your driveway. I'm trying to get into the party next door, but the street's pretty full already," Paul said. "I can pay you."

Paul reached into his pants to retrieve a wallet, and Patrick opened the door a bit wider until there was light from his house flooding out onto his lawn. Jesse and I took that as our cue.

We could tell the moment Patrick saw us because he began to close the door in Paul's face. Paul saw the move coming though, and he shoved both his shoulder and one of his feet into the door to keep it ajar.

His efforts weren't necessary for long though because Jesse was behind Paul soon enough, and, between the two of them, the door flung open.

I entered after Paul and Jesse and closed the door behind myself. No one was going to notice what happened at Patrick's house what with all the noise next door, but there was no reason to tempt fate.

"I'll call the cops," Patrick said, backing away and nearly tripping over his own sofa.

"You won't," I said. "Because the cops are going to find that watch you're wearing way more interesting than the fact that you let us in."

"I didn't let you-!"

"We only want a few words with you for now," Jesse interrupted.

I didn't know where Jesse was going with that. We hadn't planned on asking Patrick anything other than Alexa's whereabouts.

Patrick didn't move and didn't say anything. His back was still against his sofa. We were standing in what must have been his living room. He had a couple of lights on in both this room and the room next door, though the brightest thing in this room was his TV screen. He had a PlayStation hooked up to it, and a game was paused on the screen. Other than the TV and sofa, he had a coffee table stacked high with half-empty chip bags and energy drinks, and a tall bookshelf lined with books, more video games, CDs, DVDs, and even a few VHS tapes. Despite the cluttered feeling that all of the cords and cases gave, the room was pretty well kept.

Jesse stood between Patrick and the bookshelf, with one hand in a menacing grip on Patrick's arm.

"What are the two of you planning?" Jesse asked.

"We're not planning anything," Patrick said. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"You must have some kind of long term plan," Paul said. "Otherwise, you'd have moved out of this shithole the moment you knocked off the first store."

"I haven't stolen anything," Patrick said stubbornly.

"Because technically Alexa stole it for you. We get it," I said.

"Why do you people care so much? And I don't even know who you are," Patrick said, pointing at Paul with the hand attached to the arm that Jesse wasn't holding.

Paul didn't bother explaining himself, but Jesse decided to humor part of Patrick's question.

"We care because we're mediators. When there are ghosts in this world we consider it our personal responsibility to move them along. And during that process, if a ghost should start to make trouble amongst those who are still living, it's our responsibility to handle the problem," he said.

"The books never said any of that," Patrick said.

"The books?" Jesse asked confusedly.

I was confused at first too, but then I glanced at Paul, and I quickly realized exactly what books Patrick was talking about.

"I thought you had the only copy of those," I said to Paul while Jesse looked on in confusion.

"I have the original copy," Paul corrected. "How do you think the scientific community laughed Pops out if they never read his work?"

And then Paul spoke in a voice that was no longer directed at me. "Dr. Oliver Slaski," he said. "That's whose work you read, isn't it?"

Patrick hesitated but then nodded.

"What works are you talking about?" Jesse asked again.

"They're these journals that," and I paused to stop myself from identifying Paul as the grandson of the researcher. "They're these journals that details the powers that shifters have. It's how Alexa knows about being able to get in and out of that foggy place, I guess."

"But they talk about more than that?" Jesse asked.

"They talk about everything," Paul answered, looking directly at Patrick. "If you've read those books, then you must have big plans in mind. Because they talk about a hell of a lot more than just how to do basic shifting."

And Paul was right. I didn't know everything that Dr. Slaski wrote, but I did know that those books mentioned a lot more than just how to shift in and out of Shadowland. I knew that those books were the reason that Jesse was here, alive in the twenty-first century, with warm blood flowing through his veins and a doctorate in medicine. So I didn't have to ask to know exactly what Patrick was planning.

"You're trying to bring her back," I said.

This time, Patrick didn't bother denying anything.

"I didn't want things to happen like this," he said. "Alexa's gotten carried away. If it was up to me, that woman wouldn't have died. We're only doing this so we have the money to be together once she comes back. She's used to a different lifestyle than I am, and I need to be able to finance it. I need to be the man she deserves when she comes back."

I couldn't help but think about how that kind of sounded like what Jesse had been saying to me for years before we got married. He wanted to be able to provide for me and do all of that other nineteenth century patriarchal bullshit. It made as much sense to me now as it did then, so I couldn't say I felt my sympathies rising.

"When she comes back? How are you going to bring her back?" I asked.

And why wasn't Alexa here yet? Both Jesse and I were here, and her fiance was under duress. It really would've made sense for her to pop in by now. Were we going to have draw blood first or something?

"I'm guessing you haven't read Dr. Slaski's work then," Patrick said.

I shrugged and said, "I know enough." Because I knew about time traveling, and that was basically the piece de resistance of it all.

"The book talks about this technique. You take the soul out of one body, and you put a different soul in."

I swore in unison with Paul. That hadn't been what I expected him to say.

"You've got the nerve to do it where Suze here didn't then," Paul said.

Jesse looked at me imploringly for a second.

"Paul thought I was going to switch your bodies out and… Look, it's old business. I can tell you later."

Patrick looked between me and Jesse quickly. "I get it now. You died too then, didn't you?" he said to Jesse. "You're all a bunch of hypocrites. You know that, right?"

"I'm in no one's body but my own," Jesse said.

"Time travel then," Patrick said. "We would've done that, so Alexa could have the same body and everything, but since she had cancer, we figured it wasn't a viable option."

"Plan A was having my own body, but honestly Plan B is good enough for me at this point," a new voice said.

It didn't take me more than a half second to see that Alexa was now standing to my right. Paul stood to my left, and Jesse, still gripping Patrick, was in front of me.

Alexa continued, "You see Plan B is none of you making it out of this room alive. Except for you, Susannah. See, I think we've got enough money to call it quits and leave the country at this point. All I need is a new body. And after that fight we had the other day, I think you've got just the body I'm looking to come back in."

I grimaced and said, "I'll tell you the same thing I said then. Whether I'm alive or not, I'm going to make your life absolute misery."

I didn't mention the fact that I was pregnant. Alexa in all of her sadism probably wouldn't give a damn if killing me meant killing my unborn child, too. In fact, it would probably make her all the more excited to take my body. She'd be hurting me in a much more unique way than cutting me up with knives. Jesse stayed equally silent by Patrick's side. He must've been thinking the same way I was.

Paul, however, was not.

"You might think you want Suze's body, but you'll change your mind within nine months," he said.

Jesse's curse at Paul was in Spanish whereas mine was in English. Being at least bilingual, from what I'd seen back in the O'Neil's barn in the year 1850, I was sure Paul understood them both.

Alexa rolled her eyes and said, "I overheard your little talk in the kitchen the other day. If that's your big defense, then that's nothing that a coat hanger can't fix."

Her comment was distasteful at the very least, but when she said it about my kid, who wasn't even really a kid yet but would be someday, it made me feel downright murderous. I hadn't even finished adjusting to the idea of motherhood, but I couldn't recall ever feeling this angry in my life. In an instant, my vision, which had been filled with metaphorical red, cleared as I entered into a valley of deadly calm that I only transcended into when completely enraged.

Alexa grinned. "Did I hit a nerve?"

She stopped grinning once she saw my fist headed directly for her face. In the background, I could hear Patrick shouting at Jesse to let him go, but Jesse now had a full body hold on Patrick.

My punch didn't connect to Alexa's skull. Instead, she dematerialized so that she was standing between Paul and Jesse. It was a poor choice of movement on her part though.

Jesse's hold on Patrick was loosening now that Patrick had stopped struggling as much upon seeing that Alexa was uninjured. But Jesse's movement away from Patrick doubled as movement towards Alexa. And I could tell that Jesse was just as angry as I was over Alexa's words.

Alexa just laughed.

"I felt you trying to call me earlier, Susannah," she said. "So I know what you're trying to do now. You want to have your husband exorcise me with you and, I don't know, his mistress or something, as backup."

Paul spluttered at that. "De Silva's mistress? Me? You can't be serious."

Alexa ignored Paul and focused her gaze solely on me. "Newsflash. You can gather up all the friends you want to take me back to that place, but I can come back anytime I please. I thought you would have figured that out last time, you know, while I was stabbing you."

That did it-not on my end, but on Jesse's. He stopped holding back Patrick entirely, and grabbed Alexa. She was clearly caught off guard as she hadn't been looking in Jesse's direction at all.

"Slater, now!" Jesse said.

Paul grabbed a hold of Alexa, and, seconds later, the three of them were gone. Or at least, Alexa was gone, and both Jesse and Paul were unconscious.


	17. Chapter 17

**Hush**

Seventeen

"What the hell happened?" Patrick asked. He stood in a panic as he looked at the two unconscious bodies and the spot where his fiance had been standing.

"You didn't get to that part of Dr. Slaski's writing?" I asked. "When you take your soul or whatever up to that foggy place you have to leave your body behind momentarily."

"So they're trying to exorcise her-again. That didn't work last time, and there's no reason for it to work this time."

"Have you ever been up there?" I asked him.

He shook his head, and I was fairly certain that, unlike earlier, he wasn't lying.

"The whole place is enshrouded in a fog and lined with doors. And there's this guy who looks like a gladiator basically. He's called the gatekeeper. I'm not entirely sure why he's up there, but at least part of his job is warning people not to go through those doors. You see, no one who goes through those doors ever comes back."

Patrick's eyes widened at this.

"No," he said, and then he repeated the word more loudly. He took a hold of Jesse's body and began to shake him roughly, as though he could dislodge him from Shadowland that way. I knew that technique wasn't going to work. When you were up there, you had no awareness of the physical body you'd left behind. However, that didn't mean I was OK with Patrick deciding to rough up my husband.

I crossed the room in an instant and began to pull him off of Jesse. Patrick might have done some jogging or something, but he definitely wasn't hitting the gym on a regular basis. He struggled against me, and I couldn't subdue him entirely, the way Jesse had earlier, but I kept him away from both Jesse and Paul's bodies.

"Dammit," Patrick cried, and he flung himself away from me and further towards his bookcase. "Dammit, dammit, dammit. I can't lose her."

"Stop worrying about Alexa and start worrying about yourself. Now is a prime time to start preparing for prison, you know. I'm sure you've got all those stacks of money around here somewhere, just waiting to be found," I said.

And I was right.

Patrick began to fling items off of the bookshelf. I started to dodge them, but I realized he wasn't aiming them at me. He just kept throwing things, mostly books, to the ground. Until finally I realized that there was something very strange about the books that were beginning to fill up the ground between us.

They were all hollow.

The space on the bookshelf where the hollow books had been was not empty. Instead, it was filled with piles of cash. The books were only there as a decoy to mask the neat stacks of crisp bills that were burrowed behind them.

Patrick threw back a final hollow book, and I realized that there was something else on that shelf, too: a gun.

I made a movement towards Patrick to stop him from picking up the gun, but I stopped myself short as his hands wrapped around the gun's handle.

"Remember what you said earlier," I said quickly. "You didn't want to do anything bad to that woman in the jewelry store. That wasn't your idea. You're not like this. You're not the type of person to kill someone else. You're not, Patrick."

Patrick gulped nervously, and his eyes were wild.

I glanced towards Jesse and Paul, who were both still up there in Shadowland. Patrick's eyes followed my gaze, and the end of the barrel of his gun began to shift from me to Jesse.

"That won't help," I said quickly, and I positioned myself so that I was standing in front of Jesse's prone body. "That's not how it works when you shift somewhere."

"It doesn't matter how it works," Patrick said. "They're going to get rid of Alexa."

Why had I gloated at him earlier? How could I have thought giving him an honest explanation of what was going to happen to Alexa was a good idea? Of course he was flying off the handle, and it was all my fault. If anything happened to Jesse, if anything happened to my child, it would all come back to me having run my mouth.

"We'll leave, and we won't ever bother you again. You'll get to have all of that money, and you'll never see us again."

"I'll never see Alexa again either!" Patrick shouted. His hand was shaking, and there were tears in his eyes.

"Murder is illegal. You'll never see freedom again either if you shoot," I said.

Patrick laughed. It wasn't cold like Alexa's laughter had been either. It sounded manic. "California," he stammered, "California has stand your ground laws. I think it's got… Yes, stand your ground laws. I don't have to let any of you leave here alive. You… You forced your way in, and I'm defending myself. I'm just defending myself."

"You don't have to do this," I said slowly. I was using my best counselor's voice, the patient one that I used with stubborn kids who were reluctant to open up. "Even if you don't go to jail, it's hard to bounce back from murdering people. I've talked to enough ghosts who have killed people to know that. Even if you never get caught, it still feels like your soul is in prison," I said.

This was absolutely not true. The ghosts I'd spoken to who had murdered other people usually did not give a shit about their immortal souls, if immortal souls were even real. And the ones who'd gotten away with murder usually just wanted to gab to me about how clever they were. Patrick was a mediator himself, but, as he seemed to be the crappy kind, I was hoping he didn't know this.

"I have to. You don't understand, you don't understand," Patrick said. He reminded me of one of the triplets throwing a tantrum. His eyes were wet and he was hysterical. And he kept waving that damn gun around.

"Look, if you just calm down," I began.

And he shook so fiercely I thought he was having a seizure or something. I put out my hand towards him to, I don't know, make sure he didn't swallow his tongue or something, when I heard a loud bang. It sounded like a thousand firecrackers or as if all of the balloons in the Macy's Day Parade had pins put through them.

It sounded like gunshot.

And then I realized a moment later that it had been gunshot. Patrick's eyes went wide as he looked at me. I wasn't sure exactly what had caught his attention until I looked down at myself and saw the blood. I'd been shot.

A lot of things happened then in such quick succession I wasn't sure which came first.

For one thing, I'd stopped standing, and I'd fallen to the ground instead. I could hear voices behind me, Jesse and Paul. I saw the gun clatter to the floor, and I heard Patrick's voice, too. It was panicked. There were loud noises. Shouting. A quieter phone conversation in the background.

The world was a hazy afterthought to the pain that I felt racking through my body.

I watched everything through a screen as Jesse, who was no longer behind me, slammed his fist into Patrick's face. The image felt familiar, like it was him punching Paul in the Mariner's parking lot all over again. But then I saw Paul in front of me as well. And then Paul was pulling Jesse away from Patrick, and Paul and Jesse were arguing.

I knew they were speaking English, but their words sounded warped, like I was underwater or something. I felt so wet. I must've been underwater.

Paul and Jesse reached an agreement a few moments later, and Paul grabbed Patrick and began to drag him from the living room into another room somewhere. I wasn't sure Patrick's house had other rooms. It felt like anything farther than a few feet from me didn't really exist at all.

With Paul gone, Jesse knelt beside me.

And then the world tilted. I must've been lying on my stomach before because all of a sudden, all I saw was the white of the ceiling. And then, what was a distant pain, like a thunderstorm in the vicinity, became an all consuming and very much so burning pain.

A choked laugh bubbled up from my throat. I couldn't help but laugh. That was what I always did whenever I felt pain this bad. It had never been this bad before though-never. I wasn't entirely convinced that pain like this was even real.

"Susannah," Jesse said. Had he been saying my name all along?

I realized quickly that everything was burning now because Jesse's hand was pressed into my side. That must've been where Patrick had shot me. The space where his hand was felt like being stabbed with a knife made out of ice and lava. I didn't know much about gunshot wounds, but I knew that you were supposed to apply pressure when you wanted to stop bleeding. How much blood was I losing? Judging by how dazed I felt, it must've been a lot.

"Stay with me," Jesse said.

I wanted to laugh some more because that was such a cliche line. Did Jesse even know how cliche it was? I wasn't sure if I'd shown him enough movies for him to know how funny it was that he was telling me this. Stay with me, just hang in there, don't die on me… They were all classics.

"Susannah," he said again.

And I realized he was waiting for a response from me.

"I'm really sorry," I slurred. "You were right about how I should have taken a break until January. It was pretty selfish of me to put the baby in danger."

"Don't blame yourself, Susannah. You were trying to make the world a place where the baby could live in. It's my fault. I should have known something like this would happen. I shouldn't have let you come," Jesse said. His hand on my side hurt. Everything hurt.

The idea of Jesse successfully forbidding me to do something was very funny to me in my pain induced stupor. I smiled and said, "Don't beat yourself up. You have to promise me, if I die, that-."

"You're not going to die. Neither of you are going to die," Jesse said. And then he said it again. And then a third time. That meant he wasn't sure. He needed to say it out loud to convince himself as much he needed to convince me.

I wanted to keep talking, but the act of moving my mouth and making words come out was starting to feel impossible. The world felt fuzzy again, and my eyes kept fluttering, and my vision began to fill with black spots and…

I swore loudly as Jesse pressed hard into my wound.

"I told you to stay with me," Jesse said. "I didn't get resurrected after a hundred and fifty years in purgatory for you to leave me behind."

"I don't call the shots," I mumbled.

"Just keep talking to me," Jesse said. "I know you're stronger than this, Susannah, you have to keep fighting."

I wanted to keep fighting, but did Jesse have any idea how hard fighting was? I couldn't bring myself to articulate this, so I moaned in protest instead.

"Susannah," Jesse said insistently. And then he said, more quietly. "Querida, please."

I had never heard that note in Jesse's voice before, like he was lost. Jesse was always certain. I never saw him waiver or flinch in the face of anything. He had a steadfast way about him that was as strong and brilliant as the sun. I didn't want him to be lost-especially not because of me.

I tried clearing my throat before I spoke, like it was connected to the bloody hole in my side and would help rectify the situation. It didn't help much, but I didn't care. I spoke anyway-because Jesse asked me to.

"Did I ever tell you about this psychic lady I met in Brooklyn?" I said. My words were slow, but I could tell, even with how my vision was foggy, that Jesse was hanging on my every word.

"No, querida, you didn't," he said. His voice was still soft, but it didn't sound so scared anymore. He just sounded gentle.

"I know you don't really take stock in psychics," I continued, slow as ever, "but Madame Zara was the one who told me everything. She got out her tarot cards and just knew that I spoke to the dead. She was the real deal, I guess."

"She sounds impressive."

I tried to cough this time, but I didn't have the energy to do it. There was a period of silence where Jesse kept pressing insistently into my side.

"Susannah," he said urgently. "Keep talking. Tell me about something else."

"Still not done with the Madame Zara story yet," I said. "She told me one more thing."

And I hesitated before I spoke again. It wasn't because of the pain this time though believe me, it was still there. I hesitated because what I was about to say next was just embarrassing. Even though Jesse and I had been together for years now, we didn't exactly exchange sappy words on a daily basis if we could help it. Neither of us were the most romantic people, after all.

Jesse didn't know that this why I paused though, and I heard him say my voice with the same urgency as before, and his fingers dug into my side a little harder.

"Promise me you won't laugh," I said.

"I wouldn't dare."

"She said that I would only have one love, my entire life, but that it would last for all eternity. Um… I just thought, you know, as the one love and all, you might want to know that."

Jesse didn't say anything for a moment, and I wondered if the sappiness of all of it was too much for his masculinity to take seriously. When he spoke a few seconds later, I realized I was wrong.

"Why would I laugh at that, querida?" he asked. And his voice was still quiet, but it sounded...thick? Like he was choking on something.

"Oh my God," I said. "You're crying, and I can't even see it properly."

"You tell me that after you've been shot, while you're bleeding in my arms, and you blame me for being a bit emotional? I thought you wanted me to start being more open about my...feelings."

The way he said feelings, hesitantly, like it was a dirty word or something, made me giggle for about two seconds until I remembered that giggling could only exacerbate my pain. "I bet you still look sexy when you're crying," I said.

"Nombre de Dios, Susannah," he said, in the same annoyed tone he always took when he said that to me. And I couldn't help but try and laugh some more, even though it hurt like hell to do so.

Jesse's next words weren't annoyed. They were genuine and burned as fiercely as the sun. "I love you too, Susannah," he said. "You are going to make it."

This time I believed him.

 **Note:** For the record, California does not technically have stand your ground laws. Also. I read up on gunshot wound experiences on Quora, but I still want to apologize for the record breaking number of medical inaccuracies this chapter likely contains.


	18. Chapter 18

**Hush  
** Eighteen

 **Note:** This (lengthy) chapter takes place in a magical world where hospitals, medicine, science, etc. are really just abstract concepts that are subject to the high and mighty rule of Artistic License.

Once the world stopped being fuzzy, sometime around mid-morning on Saturday, Jesse was the first person I saw. He was seated in a chair pulled close to my hospital bed, and his head was bent slightly downward. I was pretty sure he was dozing, but I couldn't hear if his breathing was deep and even, the way it usually was when he slept, over the insistent beepings of all the machines I was plugged up to.

"Morning," I offered.

Even though my voice came out much more weakly than I'd been expecting it to, Jesse's head snapped upwards and he turned to look at me. He blinked momentarily and then smiled.

"You're awake," Jesse said, and I could hear the sound of relief in his voice. His relief coupled with the smile on his face made the bags under his eyes almost unnoticeable.

Almost.

"You look like shit," I said.

"Thank you, querida. You are always doing your best to build my sense of self worth," he said sarcastically. And then he said, more seriously, "How do you feel?"

"Better than I did yesterday."

"That's sort of a low standard for comparison."

I shrugged and then winced at the realization that the movement hurt.

Jesse pressed a hand against me gently in a warning. "Keep still," he said.

There was a beat of silence between us before I asked, "What happened to me anyway?"

"That," Jesse began before coming up with a swear word that sounded about as bad as the one he used for Alexa to use in place in Patrick's name, "shot you."

"I remember that much. I meant what's wrong with me," I said. I moved to sit up further in bed, even though it caused pain to shoot throughout my body. It was a good sign though. It meant I wasn't paralyzed or anything.

"You really shouldn't be moving around, Susannah," Jesse said. "One of your ribs is badly fractured from where the bullet made impact. You're lucky though. The bullet ricocheted and didn't hit any of your internal organs before it exited. Although you did lose a lot of blood from the exit wound, your ribs never punctured your lungs. At least not yet. If you don't stop moving around so much, then I may have to go back on that last statement."

"Fine," I said, "I'll stop moving, alright? But you should go home and get some sleep."

"Don't worry about me," Jesse said offhandedly.

I knew there was no point in pushing the matter. There was no way Jesse was going to leave me without someone, multiple someones most likely, dragging him away from me. So instead of attempting further persuasion, I asked, "How are you not in jail, anyway?"

Jesse looked confused. "Why would I be in jail?" he said.

"Patrick was saying this stuff about California having stand your ground laws and everything. How are we all not in a holding cell right now? Are there officers outside the door right now? Or did Paul and his money handle it?"

"I handled it," Jesse corrected. "When the ambulance and the police arrived, I let them know that you'd been counseling someone who witnessed Patrick at the site of one of the robberies, and you weren't really sure if it was a false lead or not, so you wanted to ask him a few questions yourself before the authorities got involved. Once they saw all of the money in his bookcase, they didn't really have much of a choice other than believing our story."

"How are they going to make sense of the fact that it looks like the robber is invisible?" I asked.

Jesse shrugged. "I think it's understandable that I've been more concerned with your well being than that future court case."

If the case against Patrick was too weak, he'd be back out on the streets probably. That was exactly what we didn't want and exactly what people like Francine Powell didn't deserve. But I didn't say that. I didn't say anything for a moment.

My mouth suddenly felt dry as I remembered that there was someone I needed to ask about. Someone who was much more important than Patrick. My ribs didn't have anything to do with my womb, but considering all of the blood loss…

"Jesse, how is-?"

But my words were cut off as the door to the room opened. A nurse with very friendly looking, and familiar, eyes entered the room soon afterwards.

"I see you're awake," Jill said jovially. Jill was the same nurse I'd run into last week at the hospital during my checkup. She directed her next question towards Jesse. "Is she lucid?"

"I'm lucid," I answered.

"That's very good to hear, Suze. If you need anything, I'll be working until this evening. Dr. Morrison is in surgery now, but he should be by to talk to you soon. In the meantime, are you up for some visitors? There's a whole host of people who have been meaning to see you."

"Sure, visitors are fine," I said, and I figured I'd save the question whose answer I was dreading for a few more minutes until I could see Dr. Morrison.

What I did not know then was that it's not until you get shot that you see how many people you have in your life who care about you. I guess they say the same thing about funerals. The number of people who cry is the number of people who love you, or something. But if you ever want to find that out without dying, the number of people who love you, I mean, then all you have to do is get a bullet lodged in you.

Because the parade of visitors that started a few moments later took a lot longer than a few minutes to end.

I wasn't surprised to see that the first person who burst into my hospital room was my mother, followed narrowly by Andy, my stepfather. Jesse must have called my mother up after I'd arrived at the hospital, and she and Andy had driven up from L.A. to check on me.

"Oh, Suzie," she said, and there were tears in her eyes.

"I'm fine, Mom," I said quickly.

My mother, being my mother, did not believe this at all. She spent the entirety of her visit fussing over me, chewing me out for getting shot, and then chewing Jesse out for letting me get shot. As Jesse seemed more interested in agreeing with my mother in an act of self-flagellation, I defended Jesse myself to the best of my abilities and patiently reminded my mother of my volatile middle and high school years where even she had not been able to stop me from getting into trouble. Predictably, my mother did not listen to this line of logic and continued only to fret and reprimand me more.

Once my mother had relieved all of her pent up emotions, she said, in a much more calm voice reminiscent of the newscaster she used to be, "I'm glad you're OK, Suze."

After my mother and Andy left, someone else entered the room. Someone wearing a labcoat.

My breath caught in my throat slightly as Jesse stood and shook the doctor's hand. I vaguely recognized the doctor as one of the guests from our wedding.

"I wish I could be seeing the two of you under more pleasant circumstances," Dr. Morrison said. "How are you feeling, Susannah?"

"Fine," I said automatically. "Well, in pain actually, but I guess that's about as fine as people usually are at times like these."

"That's not a bad answer," Dr. Morrison said casually, and he began to flip through some of his charts. "I'm pretty sure Jesse here has already explained everything to you, but I'll give you a refresher."

And then he explained entry wounds and exit wounds and blood loss, which, true to his word, Jesse had already covered. He then pulled out a diagram to indicate which one of my ribs was fractured.

"Normally, we'd take an x-ray, so that we could understand the full extent of the damage, but we do our best to avoid giving women x-rays while pregnant."

My breath caught in my throat. "So I'm still pregnant, right? And the baby is fine?"

"That's what we're hoping for, but, to be honest, we don't know just yet. What we do know is that the placement of your injuries means that there's certainly a chance that everything will be fine, but to suffer trauma like this in the first trimester, when many women miscarry without any abnormal circumstances, certainly complicates things. I have you scheduled for an ultrasound in a couple of hours that should give us something a little more conclusive to go off of."

"Oh," I said.

And then I only half heard what he said after that.

I felt Jesse's hand on my knee soon after Dr. Morrison left. "Everything's going to be fine, Susannah," he said. And I wanted very much so to believe him, even though I wasn't entirely sure that I did.

There was no time to argue or agree with him though. I heard the door to the room open, and I forced myself to smile and not think about the things that I couldn't change.

After all, I had not cried in front of Father Dominic a single time since I graduated from the Mission, and I wanted to keep it that way.

"How are you feeling, Susannah?" all snowy-topped six feet of him asked. Father D was out of his wheelchair though his gait was still a bit awkward, and, given how old he was when a ghost had shoved him down the stairs, it was unlikely that he'd ever had the same level of mobility he'd had in years previous.

I told him the same thing I told my mom, and Father Dom looked as though this was satisfactory enough as evidence that he could start berating me.

"I can't believe that neither of you told me about this," he said, waggling his fingers at both Jesse and I like we were naughty children.

Jesse apologized briefly, still feeling guilty no doubt, but I didn't.

"You got pushed down the stairs last time, I got shot this time," I said. "We're all still a team."

Father Dom did not look placated by this, and Jesse, if I was reading him properly, looked annoyed at my insistence that getting shot was all in a day's work for a mediator. None of us lingered on the subject, however, because the door behind Father D. opened and more people began to pour in.

I recognized them all as faculty members from the Mission Academy. A good deal of my former colleagues from my internship days had shown up, and amongst those who came bearing their sympathies was none other than Sister Ernestine. We'd gotten along better after the Lucia Martinez case, but I never could've imagined that the same woman who'd been itching to find a reason to send me home all through high school would hand me a bouquet of flowers on my sickbed.

Look, I'm going to be honest, I got a little choked up. Jesse must've noticed I was getting a little misty-eyed and decided to save my pride because he did his best to encourage the throng of people who had gathered around my bedside that brief visits were what was my best for my health at the moment.

My next visitor surprised me nearly as much as the high number of faculty members who'd just shown up.

Gina came waltzing in, her curly hair pulled back into a messy but somehow cool-looking puff, with Jake by her side.

"Gina, how'd you even get here so fast?" I asked, and I sat up further out of instinct but winced and quickly regretted my decision to do so.

"Don't worry about that," she said. "I'm asking the questions here, and what I want to know is how the hell did you get shot, Simon?"

Gina was trying her best to sound pissed, but her words weren't leaving any sting behind. She, just like everyone else who had come to visit me thus far, was worried.

"Occupational hazard," I replied casually. Gina would know what I meant.

"Of a counselor?" Jake asked. Jake, on the other hand, did not know what I meant.

He whistled and said, "Damn, I thought my job had the potential to get rough." And then Jake narrowed his eyes slightly and continued by saying, "It isn't those people you used to hang out with in high school coming back to make you pay up for quitting or something, is it?"

"What?" I asked.

Jake glanced at Jesse momentarily before he went ahead and said, "Your gang."

I groaned. "I was never in a gang," I said. "No one is trying to revenge kill me or anything. You watch way too much _Gangland_."

Jake said something under his breath that sounded like, "There's no such thing as watching too much _Gangland_ ," but I couldn't be sure entirely. The door to the hospital room opened up again, and a noisy uproar, along with five more people, entered the room.

Brad, Debbie, and the triplets had come to pay me a visit.

The triplets cries of "Aunt Suze" were near deafening as they pushed past Gina and Jake to hover around my hospital bed.

"Aunt Suze, are you OK?" was the first question they asked. It came from Cottontail.

"Of course she's going to be OK," Debbie said in one of her more upbeat and chipper voices. I could tell by her eyes that she wasn't entirely convinced of what she said, but she didn't want the triplets to worry-even if she herself didn't really give that much of a damn about my wellbeing. Despite her shortcomings as a person, Debbie was actually a very good mother.

" _Are_ you going to be OK, Suze?" Gina asked.

"Of course I'm going to be OK," I said, and I sat up a bit further, even though it put me in more pain. Jesse was looking at me, and I could tell that he was holding himself back from chastising me for moving more.

Brad said, "Next time you suspect someone's involved in a robbery and a homicide, would you mind telling me first?"

I said, "I can't make any promises," at the same time that one of the triplets said, "Aunt Suze caught a bad guy?!"

"I did. And speaking of me catching a bad guy," I said, "what's going to happen to him?"

"Between you and me… Or I guess, all of us here," Brad began, gesturing towards all nine people in the room, himself, me, Jesse, Jake, Gina, Debbie, Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cottontail, "the evidence against him is pretty damning. He's got a pretty rare and valuable watch from one of the places, and another one of the stores had a bunch of sequential bills, so we've at least got him linked to some of it. But he won't give us anything about how he managed to be off camera the whole time. We're thinking, you know, since he's a computer science geek and all, that's probably where his little trick is coming from."

"You're probably right," Jesse said. "Computers can do nearly anything nowadays."

Brad nodded and said, "We nabbed him, and that's what counts right now."

I let out a visible sigh of relief, and I could feel Gina's eyes on me. She understood more or less what had happened: ghosts and this guy had something to do with each other. I could also tell that Mopsy was watching me more closely than usual as well. I'd have to talk to all three of the triplets about this before too long.

As it turned out, before too long was less than five minutes later. Gina had reminded everyone that I was probably feeling crowded, and all of the adults began to head out of the room. The girls were pretty stubborn about wanting to visit longer, and, even though Brad and Debbie tried to get them to leave with them, I insisted that it was fine if the triplets stayed behind for a few more minutes.

I'd always wanted to hold off on the talk about how violent and serious mediating could get until they were a little older, but now, with me lying in a hospital bed with stitches and bandages all across my side, seemed like a particularly poignant moment to burst the mediator bubble wide open.

"What's the first rule of mediation?" I asked the second everyone, with the exception of Jesse, left the room.

"Tell Aunt Suze everything," the triplets chorused.

"That's right," I said. "Only your Aunt Suze can get shot and live to tell about it."

Out of the corner of my eye, I could just barely see Jesse rolling his eyes. This factoid was grossly inaccurate, as many people were shot and lived to tell about it later on, but seven wasn't quite old enough to grasp this concept.

"Aunt Suze is gonna live forever," Cottontail said solemnly.

"You say that like it's a bad thing," I said.

"What really happened?" Mopsy asked, stressing the "really."

I shrugged and said, "Sometimes bad ghosts get violent. Never forget that if a ghost is skilled enough, they can interact with real objects. Dangerous objects, like guns," I said.

Alexa hadn't been the one who shot me; that had been Patrick's doing. But Alexa had still stabbed me earlier, and what was important here was that the girls understood how much of a threat ghosts could be. I would tell them the real story, the one where a shifter-ghost and a mediator worked together to build a criminal enterprise to finance their lifestyle for after the shifter-ghost murdered someone and took control of their body, when they were older. I didn't want to get any ideas in their heads right now.

Look, I firmly believe that Brad and Debbie are not going to raise any princesses of darkness, but if Paul Slater's genes are in there, then there's always a chance that one of them might get inspired, and that was not a risk that the world needed to take.

My plan had been to lecture them about dangerous ghosts a bit more, but none of the girls were the slightest bit interested in spectral goings-on anymore. Instead, they started pointing to things around the room and asking Jesse what they were. Jesse was halfway through a simplified definition of an IV drip when the door to the hospital room began to open.

I assumed it was Debbie or Brad, come to retrieve their daughters, but I realized I was only half right a couple of seconds later. Debbie was standing there, but she wasn't by herself, and she wasn't with Brad either. On her left side, with a small stuffed animal in one of his hands, stood Paul Slater. It was like the brief thought of him earlier was enough to summon him up from the bowels of Hell.

OK, that probably wasn't entirely fair. If I was remembering anything correctly from the other night, then I think Paul might have been the one who called the ambulance. I may or may not have owed at least a little bit of the fact that I was alive to him, even if I'd rather not think about it.

"Mom!" Flopsy cried out upon seeing Debbie enter the room. She pointed to one of the screens near my bed and said, "This is a Cadillac monitor."

"Cardiac monitor," Jesse corrected absentmindedly.

"It's Aunt Suze's new heart, and it's huge!"

"That's not…" Jesse began before trailing off in the realization that the damage was done, and now the triplets were convinced that I was at least partly made of machinery. He would've tried to run damage control normally, but I was pretty sure he was too tired to bother today.

"That's nice, Emma," Debbie said patiently. And then she turned to me and said, "I didn't know you were with Paul the other day, Suze. You should have told me. We could have, I don't know, gone out for dinner together. A little reunion to play catch-up. It's been awhile, you know."

I didn't think Debbie would cheat on Brad, but I also wasn't entirely sure if Debbie meant the three of us should've gone out for dinner together or just her and Paul. I could tell that, either way, Paul disliked the idea.

Paul's nigh unshakable veneer of money and coolness was giving way to a look of genuine discomfort. This was understandable, considering that he was talking to the mother of his children, who did not know she was the mother of _his_ children, and standing in a room with three little girls who shared half of his DNA. What must have started as a simple enough visit was probably going to end with him hoping that Debbie didn't look too closely between himself and the triplets. After all, the non-disclosure statements Jesse and I had signed would do nothing against someone else finding out on their own.

"Some other time, Debbie," Paul offered without so much as trying to feign sincerity.

Surprisingly, Debbie seemed to get the memo, so she herded the girls up from where they were standing around my bed, and with a last chorus of goodbyes from the triplets, the number of people in the room dropped to three.

I glanced over at Jesse to see that he was tense. Even though I knew he was tired, he wasn't showing it. His eyes were trained on Paul with a hawk-like intensity.

"You know, I have a clear memory of you saying no one was going to get shot this time around," Paul said.

"I guess I just like the excitement of it all," I said, trailing off.

From the corner of my eye, I could see that Jesse's gaze was as intense as ever. Paul said, more to Jesse than to me, "Relax. I just thought it would be polite to stop by while I was still in the area. I come bearing gifts. Well, _a_ gift."

And he handed me a stuffed bear wearing a tiny sweater embroidered with the words "Get Well Soon."

"Thanks," I said.

And that was that. He turned to leave without so much as a goodbye. I had the feeling I'd see him again though. The universe always conspired to bring us back together when it felt like my life was getting too comfortable, but I was hoping the day when I saw him next wouldn't come around for a long while.

With Paul out of the room, Jesse reached over me and made a grab for the bear.

"We'll burn it in effigy later," he explained.

I tried not to let out a very un-ladylike snort and said, "Jesse, it's just an innocent gift shop bear. It's not like it has a hidden camera in it or something."

Jesse turned the bear over in his hands several times, clearly performing an impromptu investigation for hidden cameras, and said, "Do you know he tried to leave me-up there?"

It took a second for me to realize that "up there" meant Shadowland. When I figured out what he meant, I said, "He didn't."

But the look on Jesse's face said very plainly that Paul had. Tried to abandon him in Shadowland, I mean.

"Next time, he's going to be the one getting shot," I said darkly. "How many bones of his did you have to break up there for him to see reason?"

"None," Jesse said, and then he shifted slightly in discomfort.

"Oh, God. You didn't have to trade him a sexual favor or something, did you?"

The look on Jesse's face was so utterly unamused, I couldn't help but laugh. The pain in my side soon persuaded me to change my guffaws into small chuckles though.

"I am so happy to have amused you," Jesse said dryly.

"I'm sorry," I said, but I knew I was grinning too hard for him to believe me. "What got you out then?"

"You know, I'd tell you, but I'm afraid you'll just laugh at me again. First, you insult my appearance, and then you imply I would be...intimate, with Slater, of all people. Honestly, querida, you've really wounded my pride."

"Tell me," I said. "I'll make it up to you and your pride later."

Jesse didn't say anything for a moment, and I was about to implore him again, when he finally spoke. "It was you. He realized you wouldn't be happy with him if he forced you away from me, so he decided to prioritize his- _attraction_ -to you, over his hatred for me."

"Oh," I said. And I felt a slight sinking in my stomach. The extent to which the spawn of Satan, the engaged spawn of Satan mind you, had developed a soft spot for me was always disconcerting.

"And when we finally did get back and we saw you…" Jesse trailed off, the same way he did when it came to talking about when he'd been dead or what his family was like. Difficult topics, particularly the kind that produced emotional reactions, were his favorite thing to bury.

"When I saw what had happened to you, I wasn't thinking clearly. I was enraged-at that," and here Jesse broke off to swear at Patrick, in English, surprisingly, "and for some reason, I thought it would be better to prioritize handling him."

Jesse broke off again and began to rub the back of his head with his hand. "It took Slater to remind me that I was a doctor and that I should let him take care of Patrick instead. In his own depraved way, he really does care about you."

I wasn't sure what I was going to say to that. I didn't have to figure out my answer though because the stream of visitors continued shortly. My mother returned both to fuss over me some more and to hand her phone over to me so I could speak to a very anxious Doc (both mine and Jesse's phones had died), and then some of my former classmates from grad school came by, as well as one of my roommates from undergrad, and then CeeCee showed up to round out the pack.

She wasn't alone though. Aside from the large bouquet of flowers and candy she was carrying, there was also a man who was, more or less, on her arm. I'd never met him before, but I already knew who he was.

He must've been Hugo Braggart, CeeCee's work husband and the source of the recent conflict between CeeCee and Adam.

"Suze!" CeeCee cried, rushing over to my hospital bed. "God, you look awful."

"Thanks," I said.

"Oh, sorry," she said sheepishly. She took a step back and indicated Hugo, who was hovering slightly awkwardly and more closely to the door, to come near.

"This is the legendary Suze Simon. Well, Suze de Silva now," CeeCee said, and she waved a hand in Jesse's direction to explain why the Simon part wasn't up to date anymore.

"Nice to meet you. Hugo Braggart," Hugo said. "You're not the same Suze who helped to solve that murder that was covered up to look like an accident a few years back, are you?"

"The one and only," I said. And I thought of Michael Meducci for the first time in years.

"You should come and work for the paper," Hugo said. "You're pretty good at solving mysteries and all, and we could always use-."

"She's already got her dream job, Hugh," CeeCee interrupted.

Hugh? CeeCee and I were definitely going to have to talk later. But for now, and with "Hugh" in the room, we wound up only talking about my accident and the cause of my accident, Patrick.

No sooner than CeeCee and Hugo left, Jill, the nurse from earlier, entered to take me away in a wheelchair for my ultrasound.

"The good thing about this," Jill said, trying to be upbeat as we trekked off for the examination room that was going to determine whether or not today was the worst day of my life, "is that you've technically been fasting, so the examination won't have to wait."

"Great," I said. I tried not to let sarcasm creep into my voice, but it was nearly impossible.

I was on the examination table a few minutes later, and the sonographer arrived shortly afterward. The sonographer, however, was not the only person to enter the room.

"I really didn't think I'd ever be seeing you under these circumstances," Dr. Morgana Morgan said.

"I could say the same thing," I muttered as Jesse introduced himself to Dr. Morgan.

A few minutes later, there was cold jelly on my stomach and the sonographer was following along it with some sort of instrument that was cabled together with the ultrasound machine. And then an image of my insides showed up on the screen.

With the way Dr. Morgan was standing, I couldn't make out the entire picture. I looked from the screen to Jesse, but his face wasn't giving anything away. I felt a weight settle in on my chest. Not from anything connected to the machine though. If Jesse looked so impassive, it probably meant that there was nothing ahead but bad news.

I braced myself just as Dr. Morgan said, "Good news for now."

"Good news?" I asked in confusion.

She smiled and said, "There's a baby in there, and it's got a heartbeat."

There was a lump in my throat that I couldn't quite swallow past, and I felt my eyes began to water. It took me a few seconds to figure out that I wasn't having some sort of allergic reaction to something though. Because I couldn't think of a single time in my life when I'd openly cried out of happiness. But there I was, clearing my throat and trying to discreetly wipe my eyes as Jesse and Dr. Morgan spoke to each other.

A few moments later, Dr. Morgan said, "I want to see you again in a couple of weeks. Alright, Susannah?"

"Right," I said. I tried to say it in my clearest voice, but the words ended up getting a bit choked regardless.

Dr. Morgan smiled understandingly at me as both she and the sonographer left the room.

"I told you everything was going to be fine," Jesse said, and he bent down to kiss my forehead. And that was when the dam of emotional fitness I'd constructed to hold my tears back sprung a leak.

Jesse noticed and began to brush away my tears with his thumb. For some reason, that made me want to cry more. Thankfully, I managed to wrangle my emotions back into place by the time Jill came to wheel me back to my room.

It was obvious enough that I'd been crying for Jill to ask, "Is everything OK?"

"Everything is perfect," I said, without a single trace of sarcasm.

Jill looked confused, but she smiled at me all the same.

The world felt strange once it was just me and Jesse by ourselves in my hospital room. In our absence, the flow of visitors had come to a halt, and we were left alone with hulking amounts of flowers, chocolates, and stuffed animals to canvas the room. For the first time, I noticed that I could see the ocean in the window behind where Jesse was sitting.

I smiled, both at him and at the ocean, and said, "It's not the best timing probably, but I think we should tell everyone now. They're all here, and no one will fight each other over who found at first."

Jesse looked surprised for a moment before he said, "Are you sure? You know everyone will fuss over you even more if they know you're pregnant."

"I can handle it," I said, and I grinned at him.

My smile must've been infectious because it wasn't more than a few seconds later before Jesse was smiling, too.

"Little Penelope must be a mediator," I said. "Only a mediator could stand getting shot before even being out of the womb."

Jesse's smile waned as he wrinkled his nose. "I thought I told you that I'm not naming our daughter Penelope."

"Could be a son," I said. "It's too early to tell."

Jesse's family definitely ran more strongly towards daughters, but Jesse just shrugged and said, "We'll love it either way."

My smile grew broad enough to make my cheeks hurt. He was right. We would.


End file.
